Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  Everett bolted. Back to the shelter of the woods he ran, in a shuffling, side-canted gait that was much faster than it appeared. Behind him, the girl screamed and screamed again.

  He charged among the trees, breath whistling between crooked teeth, his own heavy footfalls jarring him as he picked up speed. Brown, bark-covered trunks flashed past on either side. He reached the street, dashed to the Volvo, threw the shovel into the back seat, climbed in and drove away. His erection was enormous; two blocks away he pulled into an alley and finished himself.

  What the hell’s wrong with me, Everett Wilson thought. I’m acting like a pervert or something.

  Tom Earl Peterman, the afternoon shift detective-at-large in the Crimes Against Persons Division of the Arlington Police Department, thought at first that the park and playground on West Division Street were in the City of Grand Prairie. The mid-cities area between Dallas and Fort Worth were like that, city limit boundaries crawling here and there like the edges of jigsaw puzzle pieces, half the time no one sure what the fuck town they were in. Peterman sipped black coffee, ran his finger west on the map along Division among red, blue, and yellow pinheads, until he reached the intersection of Walden Street. He frowned. “Shit, it’s ours. I guess I got to take the fucker.”

  “Lady’s pretty excited,” Detective Smitty Anderson said. He tore the top sheet from a ruled pad. “Mrs. Jackson. Here’s the address.” Anderson was tall, skinny, and red-faced with a big protruding Adam’s apple, and at the moment appeared glad that he’d drawn telephone duty and didn’t have to drive to the scene and investigate the call. Pain in the ass, Peterman thought.

  Tom Earl Peterman was twenty-four, slim-waisted and broad-shouldered, a former defensive back from Fort Worth Southwest High who’d made detective less than a month ago. “Goddam parks are crawling with these wackos,” Peterman said. “He do anything to the girl?” He set down his coffee, held his finger in place on the map, and inserted a red pin at the intersection of Division and Walden, right beside his third knuckle.

  “Nope,” Anderson said. “Not that she told her mother about. According to the woman the girl started screaming and the guy hauled ass.”

  Peterman went to the coat tree, took down his service revolver and shrugged into the nylon holster rig. “So I’m going out and ask some questions and make a report. The girl won’t remember if the guy’s tall or short, but I bet she can tell you what his dick looked like. They all remember that much. Think there’s a message there?”

  “You know, Peterman,” Anderson said, “you are one sexist son of a bitch. Someday it’s going to put you in a world of hurt. To hell with it, we got to do a report. But I wouldn’t waste a lot of time with it. Guy going around waving his pecker’s not going to hurt anybody anyhow. They’re all afraid of their shadows.”

  Samuel Lincoln trusted psychologists even less than he trusted parolees, which was about as far as he could throw „em, and the way this Dr. Anna Matthews was acting made him trust her even less. Lincoln had never heard of such a thing, a psychologist coming all the way down to the parole office just because he’d terminated her counseling contract with one lousy ex-convict. Jesus Christ, the woman was acting as though she was losing her entire practice. What the hell, in no time she’d have two or three more parolees to counsel and could bill the state even more than she’d been billing them up to now. A hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour, Lincoln thought, that’s what I ought to be getting just for putting up with this obstinate woman. Samuel Lincoln was having a bad week; first the F&F Construction Company guy, now this pissed-off psychologist. Lincoln leaned forward and touched his fingertips together on top of his desk. “What’s the man’s name again?” he said. “I’ve got a couple of hundred files to keep up with here.”

  Dr. Anna Matthews, Lincoln had to admit, was a pretty cool customer, a tiny, businesslike lady with short dark hair, her expression friendly but inquisitive, never flustered no matter what, just the way they taught „em in psychologist’s school. “Wilson,” she said. “Everett Thomas Wilson. His last session with me was a week ago Monday.”

  “Wilson, Wilson.” Lincoln scratched his chin, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah.” He opened his bottom drawer and thumbed through the file folders, all the way back to the letter W. “Ugly guy,” Lincoln said. “Looks like a gorilla. Yeah, sure, I remember him.” He found the folder and lifted it out of the drawer.

  “His physical makeup is one of his problems,” Anna Matthews said. “Just one of many.”

  “They’ve all got some problems, ma’am,” Lincoln said. “Otherwise they never would have gone to prison. According to my chart you’re paid up to date. I approved your last statement April twenty-ninth.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Matthews said. “That’s not why I’m here. As I said, I want to talk about why he’s not coming back.”

  “Well, that’s an easy question to answer,” Lincoln said. “Twenty-six counseling sessions, that’s enough to take care of anybody’s problems. We’re working on a short budget here.” Money’s what it’s all about, he thought, no matter what this woman says.

  She primly crossed her legs and smoothed her lime-green skirt. “Are you familiar with this man’s history, Mr. Lincoln?”

  Familiar? Lincoln thought. Two hundred assholes, I’m supposed to be familiar with this one guy. “Sure,” he said. “We’re familiar with everybody’s history down here.” He snapped open the file. “Guy’s done three burglary beefs, last one ten years, did twenty-six months, paroled to Fort Worth eleven-fourteen-eighty-nine.” What the hell’s she think a parole officer is for? he thought. “The board recommended counseling, Dr. Matthews. That’s why we sent him to you. Now we feel that he’s had his counseling, he needs to get on with his life.” Lincoln favored Anna Matthews with his best That’s-the-way-it-is-and-that’s-final expression.

  She didn’t even blink. “Does your file show that a condition of his parole was that he not return to Houston to live?”

  “It’s probably in here. A lot of these prosecutors, well they get . . . get it in for these guys.” Lincoln had almost said, “get a hard-on for these guys,” then had considered who he was talking to. He cleared his throat. “I got quite a few of „em that can’t go back to their home towns, usually it’s something personal with the prosecutor or judge. They’ve all got to justify their existence.” Including you, Lincoln thought. Wonder if she’s got it in for blacks.

  “Does your file show why he can’t go back?” Anna Matthews’s expression remained calm, as though Lincoln was one of her patients, as if even though she was a high-priced doctor she didn’t look down on people who had to work for a living. Give me a break, Lincoln thought.

  “Probably,” Lincoln said. “Most of „em got some reason or other, these prosecutors have to put something down. Concern for the victim or some such, they can’t just restrict the guy without giving a reason. If they didn’t say something the board wouldn’t go along with their request that the guy live someplace else. We don’t just rubber-stamp „em, you know.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Dr. Matthews said, adjusting her position in the chair, one hand dangling loosely from the end of the armrest, showing manicured and polished nails. Clear lacquer. “And that’s comforting. But in any system there are a few who slip through the cracks, and the real purpose of my visit is to impress on you the kind of animal you’re dealing with. This man needs more counseling. A great deal more. He’s a victim of some pretty serious child abuse, and the odds are pretty slim that he’ll ever get over it.” On the wall behind her, visible over the top of her head, the small round clock showed 4:05. Twenty-five more minutes, Lincoln thought, then I can get out of here and have a few cool ones.

  “Hey,” Lincoln said. “I remember talking to this guy. He grew up in an orphans’ home in Houston. Come to think about it, I talked to him about it a long time, and he didn’t say anything about anybody mistreating him. Seems like a pretty friendly guy, tell you the truth. Well adjusted, mo
st of these parolees won’t look you in the eye.”

  “Oh, he puts on a good front. That I’ll grant you. The abuse, that came before the home. His foster father. Everett never knew his mother. She was a lesbian, and I suspect strongly that Everett was conceived during a rape in the Harris County Jail. She wouldn’t have submitted to a man on a voluntary basis.”

  You ought to know about that, Lincoln thought. He said, “A rape? What, some guards or something? That happens.”

  She calmly shook her head. “Inmates. There’s no documentation, of course, I’ve had to piece the scenario together. His mother was called Mikey D. Dalton, and I say „called’ because she didn’t even have a birth certificate that anyone’s been able to locate. She’s got—had, she’s dead now—a long record in Harris County. Solicitation, drugs, you name it. She acted and dressed the part of a man, made solicitations for oral sex to men who thought she was male and were themselves of that persuasion. Every time she was booked into the jail she refused to acknowledge her gender and wound up on the male side. I suspect the rape happened in one of the holding cells, before they undressed her and discovered what they had.”

  Lincoln drummed his fingers, tried his best to appear interested, figuring that the pay was the same for listening to this woman as doing anything else. He raised his eyebrows and didn’t say anything.

  “According to records at Ben Taub Hospital,” Anna Matthews said, “—and keep in mind that these are very old records, and as such, must be taken with a grain of salt—but according to the records, she checked in to have the child aborted. She met a man there, an orderly with a long criminal history himself, named Eli Wilson. Mikey backed out on the abortion and later had her baby and turned the child over to Eli Wilson. Sold the child, more than likely, but there’s no proof of that. What is documented is that Eli Wilson made his money in child pornography. That and worse things.

  “Eli Wilson took the boy home and named him. Kept him locked in the closet mostly, then took him out for . . . for photo sessions. Also for paid sexual sessions, most of them arranged by Eli’s wife. Lovely couple, what?” Anna Matthews looked down at her lap, then raised long-lashed eyes, slightly hesitant in her manner for the first time since she’d entered Lincoln’s office. She flicked her tongue quickly over her upper lip and went on. “When Everett was four years old he resisted once. As punishment, the wife held Everett down while Eli nailed the boy’s penis to a board.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Lincoln sat up straighter, interested now, wondering whether this woman could be putting him on so that she could keep on treating the guy. Anna Matthews looked to be in her early thirties, just a few years older than Lincoln himself, and Lincoln wondered how she got up nerve enough to talk to men about things like this. Might get her kicks that way, Lincoln thought. “Jesus Christ,” Lincoln said again. “Did you look at his . . . ?”

  Dr. Matthews smiled slightly. “I don’t make a habit of examining my patients’ private parts, Mr. Lincoln. You’re his parole officer. Have you? Seen it.”

  “No. No, why would I be looking at the guy’s . . . ?”

  “Urinalysis, perhaps. Drug testing.”

  Lincoln said, “This guy’s got no drug history, people with his record we don’t U.A. Sometimes these guys make things up.”

  “I’m trained to spot that,” Anna Matthews said, her calm returning, her hesitancy gone. “Besides, this is documented. That’s how he wound up in the orphans’ home, a neighbor heard the child screaming and called the police. Eli drew a thirty-year sentence, the wife ten. He never made his release date, incidentally. Stabbed in the exercise yard by another inmate. People like Eli are not very popular even in prison, it’s my understanding. I deal with sex offenders every day, Mr. Lincoln, and people who were abused as children are classic cases. Everett Wilson, though, is more than classic. He actually seems to admire Eli.”

  She enjoys it, Lincoln thought, sitting around talking about all these sexual nuts. He forced himself not to smirk and searched quickly through Wilson’s file. “I don’t remember any sex offenses on his record,” Lincoln said. “We watch pretty close for that stuff.”

  “No convictions, Mr. Lincoln. Everett Wilson—he legally took the last name, which is strange in light of what Eli did to him—Everett puts on a tough-guy front, and I think the feminine traits one associates with a case like this are missing because, well, he simply never had any feminine influence whatsoever. But the result is the same. I’ve talked to the prosecutor, incidentally, along with the investigating officers on his last case. There had been a string of child molestations, an unknown man carrying little girls out of their bedrooms at night and . . . They caught Everett in the act of climbing in a little girl’s window. He accepted the burglary sentence in a plea agreement. According to the prosecutor, since he’d never been caught in the act of molesting one of the children, it was the best the state could do. Both the prosecutor and the investigators are convinced that he was the culprit. The molestation incidents ceased once Everett went to prison.”

  “Hey, isn’t this the guy . . . ?” Lincoln allowed the papers he was holding to drop back into the open file folder. “Yeah. Yeah, this is the guy that told me he used to be a football player. I didn’t think he looked much like one, tell you the truth.”

  “He was a good all-around athlete in spite of his strange physique,” Anna Matthews said. “They did reconstructive surgery on his penis before he entered the home, but I think his injuries are quite repugnant to look at. He’s awfully reluctant to talk about them, even though he’s pretty glib on every other subject. When he was older, the kids at the home were allowed to attend public school in Pasadena. You know, the Houston suburb. Everett was a very good defensive lineman and even had some chances for football scholarships. Do you have any idea what happened to those chances?”

  “According to my file,” Lincoln said, “his first trip to the joint was when he was eighteen. I guess that ended them.”

  “Not exactly, his first burglary sentence was after he’d graduated from high school. But there was another incident which happened in school, and frankly it’s difficult to get the school administration to talk about it. A teacher. He beat her up and put her in the hospital. For some reason no charges were ever filed, and from my interviews with Everett I sort of, well, suspect that what happened was that the teacher made some sexual advances to him and he went berserk. If she was the aggressor, that would explain why she didn’t go to the police even though he broke her jaw and arm. But word got around, and that’s why the colleges were no longer interested in him as a football prospect. I suppose the University of Oklahoma never heard about him.” She smiled at her own little joke, then composed herself. “He’s still terribly strong, even now at forty.” Anna Matthews intertwined her fingers, the clinical psychologist now completely at home, right in her own ballyard with what she was discussing. And just a little bit smug about it, Lincoln thought, thinking she’s talking over my head.

  “It’s pretty interesting that you should come up with all that on him,” Lincoln said. “Especially when the whole state of Texas couldn’t. This file looks like a case history on a plain vanilla burglar to me. A guy stealing TVs and stuff.”

  “Oh, he steals things,” Anna Matthews said. “And swaggers around and talks out of the side of his mouth, and does everything a tough convict should do. He’s absolutely rabid about wanting everybody to think he’s one of the penitentiary „in’ crowd, but the prison psychologists recognized the tics in his makeup. It’s pretty easy to do once you’ve interviewed him a couple of times. That’s why they recommended counseling in his parole regimen, that plus what the Houston authorities had to say about him. I consider Everett both unpredictable and potentially dangerous, Mr. Lincoln, even more so because of the outward veneer of normality, and I’m here to let you know that if you terminate his counseling there may be serious consequences.” Her tone was calm and matter-of-fact, her gaze steady; the lady meant exactly what she was saying.
<
br />   There she goes again, Lincoln thought, talking down to me, this pint-sized woman trying to use her education and looks in order to get the upper hand. Lincoln wondered briefly whether she’d go over his head to his supervisor. Probably would, he thought. The trouble was that Lincoln had recommended terminating the visits and had put it on the list of things he’d done to stay within the budget, and if he now reversed himself he was going to look pretty stupid. But Jesus Christ, he thought, a kid getting his tallywhacker nailed to a board. He closed the file and pretended to think it over, then finally said, “Tell you what, Dr. Matthews, I’ll talk it over with my boss. Whatever he says goes, if he wants to overrule me on this one it’s up to him. How’s that?”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Anna Matthews said. “But I’m going to stress the importance of time. Everett doesn’t need to be walking around without help for very long. Thanks for lending your ear, Mr. Lincoln.” She stood, picked up her clipboard from Lincoln’s desk, and turned to go.

  That ought to hold her off a couple of months, Lincoln thought.

  Everett Wilson didn’t like TV news. Couldn’t stand it, in fact, some fucking nigger sitting up there grinning, or worse than that, some white guy who got his hair done in a beauty parlor and laid around in a tanning salon with the rest of the perverts, telling all about George Bush playing golf or, even worse to Everett’s way of thinking, showing a videotape of some Iraq hostage whining for somebody to turn him loose. Those fucking Iraqis were damn sure lucky they didn’t have Everett Thomas Wilson for a hostage. Everett Thomas Wilson would show the fucking sand-niggers what a real by-God ex-Texas convict thought about anybody trying to hold him for ransom. Make them sand-niggers holler uncle is what Everett Thomas Wilson would do. Served George Bush right, sending a bunch of wimps over to Iraq for some fucking terrorists to capture.