Blood on My Hands

by Todd Strasser

  Lost in thought, I idly scroll through the photos on Slade’s phone. They are, for the most part, photos of me. Mixed in are a few shots of young men in military uniforms, no doubt acquaintances from Guard training.

  And then … a photo that causes me to freeze. A young woman’s naked torso, shot from the chin down. A slim body with large round breasts.

  It is an unmistakable glimpse of how much I still don’t know.

  Chapter 49

  INTERVIEW WITH DAKOTA ELIZABETH JENKINS

  B—Chief of Detectives, Dennis K. Bloom

  J—Dakota Elizabeth Jenkins

  M—Detective Sergeant Ellis McGregor

  NU—Nurse Elena Sanchez

  TAPE 1, SIDE A

  B Today’s date is September seventeenth and it is now 3:43 in the afternoon. We are in Fairchester County Hospital. Present in the room are myself, Dennis K. Bloom, Chief of Detectives, Soundview PD; Detective Sergeant Ellis McGregor, Soundview PD; Dakota Elizabeth Jenkins; and Nurse Elena Sanchez. Would each of you please identify yourself?

  M I’m Detective Sergeant Ellis McGregor.

  J Dakota Jenkins.

  NU I am Elena Sanchez.

  B Miss Jenkins, would you please state your age and your social security number?

  J You want me to read the number?

  B Yes, please.

  J I am eighteen years old and my social security number is …

  B Miss Jenkins, are you prepared to acknowledge that you have read this form and you acknowledge before myself and Detective McGregor as witnesses that you recognize this form to be your Miranda warning and waiver statement of your rights?

  J Yes.

  B And at this time you do in fact waive your right to an attorney and wish to speak to both myself and Detective McGregor?

  J Yes.

  B Can you tell me what day this is?

  J September seventeenth.

  B And what day of the week?

  J I’m pretty sure it’s Wednesday.

  B And how do you feel right now in terms of your physical condition?

  J Tired and worn out.

  B Are you of sound mind to speak to us?

  J I think so. Yes.

  B Would you please state the reason why you called us here?

  J To tell you what happened with Katherine.

  M When you say Katherine, do you mean Katherine Remington-Day?

  J Yes.

  B And when you say you want to tell us what happened, what do you mean?

  J What I think happened the night she died.

  B When you say “what I think happened,” is that because you’re not sure?

  J I’m sure of some things, but not so sure of others.

  B All right.

  J Where should I begin?

  M Maybe with the things you’re sure about.

  J I’m sure that I took the knife from Katherine’s house.

  M What knife?

  J The knife that was used to kill her. We were in the middle of a fight and I pretended I wanted to make up. But I really just wanted the knife.

  B Why?

  J Why did I take it?

  B Yes.

  J I wanted Slade to scare her.

  M Would that be Slade Lamont?

  J Yes.

  B How would he scare her?

  J He would put a stocking on his head and wear latex gloves and act like he was going to attack her.

  B Where?

  J In the woods behind the baseball field.

  B How would he get the knife?

  J I gave it to him.

  B Why would he agree to take it and scare her?

  J I was having sex with him. And I got my mother to help make sure he received a medical deferment so that he wouldn’t be sent overseas with his National Guard unit.

  M Was your mother aware of why you wanted her help?

  J Oh God, no. I just told her that he was a friend of mine and that he was really scared that the selective service board would deny his disability claim. She said she’d look into it. I don’t even know if she actually did more than that. He had a trick knee and might not have been allowed to go anyway.

  B But he received the deferment?

  J Yes.

  M So you’re saying that he felt he owed you a favor?

  J Yes.

  B Why did you want to scare Katherine?

  J Because I hated her. She was an awful person and liked to scare people and do other mean things to them. I wanted her to have a taste of her own medicine.

  B Why did you hate her?

  J Because I … I also loved her.

  B Sorry?

  J I didn’t want to love her. She wanted me to be like her and I didn’t want to.

  M When you say “be like her,” what do you mean?

  J Be gay. She wanted me to be a lesbian, like her.

  B So you wanted Slade Lamont to scare her?

  J That’s what I told him I wanted him to do. But I was really hoping he’d kill her.

  B Why?

  J Because I hoped that if he killed her, it would all go away.

  B What would go away?

  J The feelings. I mean, about loving her. About being a lesbian.

  M What made you think that Slade Lamont would kill Katherine?

  J Nothing. I just hoped he would. Or at least hurt her really badly. I knew she would recognize him through the stocking. And I knew Katherine would laugh at him and taunt him, because that’s the kind of person she was.

  B And you thought laughing and taunting would be enough to make him want to kill her?

  J He was really depressed and angry and drinking a lot. It was all because this girl, Callie Carson, had broken up with him. But what he didn’t know was that the reason she broke up with him was because Katherine had sort of forced her to do it. And I knew that given the chance, Katherine would tell him, because she loved to gloat over things like that.

  M Why would Katherine force Callie Carson to break up with Slade?

  J Because she had a crush on Callie. Callie was the most hetero girl ever. And she’d had the same boyfriend longer than any other girl in our grade. And Katherine felt it would be the most amazing challenge just to get Callie to try a girl. And in her mind the first step was to get her to break up with her boyfriend.

  B Didn’t you say before that you were having sex with Slade Lamont?

  J Uh-huh.

  B Why?

  J Because I wanted to. I was attracted to him and there weren’t that many boys I felt that way about. Plus, I told myself that as long as I was having sex with him, I couldn’t be gay.

  M And since Katherine had already gotten Callie to break up with him …

  J I’d tried once before when he was with Callie, but he wouldn’t do it. But as soon as I heard that Callie had broken up with him, I started to talk to him by e-mail and online, because he was still in Georgia. He kept saying that as soon as he got home from National Guard training, he was going to go see her, so finally I told him that she’d left him for another guy. That’s how I got him to change his mind.

  B Just to be clear, did you ever tell Slade Lamont you wanted him to kill or hurt Katherine?

  J No, because I knew he’d never agree to that.

  M Did Slade Lamont ever give you any impression that he wanted to do more than just scare Katherine?

  J No. He didn’t even want to do that, but I told him that if he didn’t, I would get my mother to rescind the deferment. Of course, I couldn’t have really done that but he didn’t know. He believed me.

  B So from your point of view, was anything about Katherine Remington-Day’s death planned or premeditated?

  J No, nothing.

  M And as far as Slade Lamont’s participation, do you believe anything was planned or premeditated?

  J Like I said, I don’t think so. I think you can rake up a pile of dry leaves and throw a lit match on them and sometimes they’ll catch fire and sometimes they won’t.

  M What about Cal
lie Carson?

  B Sorry? Oh, right. Miss Jenkins, you tried to put the blame for the murder on her.

  J I felt I had to shield Slade. If the police found out about him, he’d tell them about me.

  M There are a few other people we’d like to ask you about.

  J Okay.

  M Did Mia Flom or Griffen Clemment have anything to do with your plan?

  J No.

  B Did they know about it?

  J No.

  M What about Jerry Fairman?

  J I thought you already talked to him.

  M We want to corroborate his story. He says he knew nothing about your plans.

  J That’s true. When Callie’s texts came from a blocked number, I had a feeling he was involved because I’d once gotten him to help me do that.

  B The texts you sent to Griffen Clemment?

  J Yes. Everyone knows he can do things like that. So I called the anonymous tip line and said he might be involved.

  B All right, Miss Jenkins, I just want you to know that I really appreciate this and I just have a few more questions. Would you please state for the record how this interview came to take place?

  J After Katherine was killed, I knew I was at least partly to blame, or maybe worse. I felt like I couldn’t live with myself … with the idea that I was partly responsible. And that because of me, Callie Carson might go to jail. Yesterday it just got to be too much for me and I took a bunch of pills. Like, everything I could find in the medicine cabinet. But after I took them, I realized I’d made a mistake and I called 911. They brought me here and pumped my stomach and then someone came in … I think she said she was the staff psychiatrist or something, and she asked me why I’d wanted to kill myself and it all just came out. And she pretty much said I had to tell the police what I’d told her.

  M And since you’re eighteen, you’re not a minor and don’t need your parents’ approval to give this confession. But I’m curious why you haven’t consulted them.

  J They were here last night and again today, but I know what they’d want to do if I told them the truth about what happened. They’d want to hire a lawyer and try to get me off without being punished. And they probably have enough money and connections to do it, too. But that’s not what I want.

  M What do you want?

  J I … I need to take responsibility for what I did. Otherwise I don’t think I can live with myself.

  B Well, like I said, we appreciate that and what you’ve told us. Now, is there anything else you want to tell us that we haven’t asked about?

  J No, I think I’ve told you everything.

  B At any time during this interview did you feel coerced or forced to say something you believed was not true?

  J No. I told you everything I wanted to tell you. You didn’t make me say anything I didn’t want to say. I’m just … really sorry about what happened.

  B Ms. Sanchez, at any time during this interview did you observe Miss Jenkins being coerced or forced to say anything it appeared she did not believe was true?

  NU No. It appeared to me that she gave all the information willingly.

  B It is now 4:12 on September seventeenth. This concludes our interview with Miss Dakota Jenkins.

  Chapter 50

  IN THE DAYS that followed Slade’s arrest, the news reported that the police had found traces of Katherine’s blood on the floor mat in Slade’s pickup. They’d also determined that the downward angle of the stab wounds on her body meant that Katherine’s killer was likely to be taller than she was and right-handed. And probably not a short lefty, like me. Finally, they’d found evidence, Slade’s DNA, under Katherine’s fingernails.

  Dakota had convinced Slade to hide near the dugout with latex gloves and a stocking over his head. Before the kegger, Dakota went to Katherine’s house, pretending she wanted to make up after their most recent fight. While she was there, she took one of the kitchen knives. At the kegger she met Slade by the dugout and gave him the knife. Later she told Katherine she wanted to speak to her in private about everything that had happened between them and suggested that Katherine go to the dugout and wait for her.

  Katherine went to the dugout, where Slade was hiding and drinking. He heard her coming and stepped out in his disguise with the knife. But Katherine recognized him. Assuming that he was only trying to scare her, and that this was his revenge for her getting me to break up with him, she laughed and taunted him, saying that if he was stupid enough to do something like this, then she was glad she’d gotten me to break up with him, because he really didn’t deserve me.

  Until that moment, Slade had believed Dakota’s lie—that I’d broken up with him because of another guy. But now he learned that it was Katherine who’d engineered the breakup. And he lost it. There was no other way to explain it. When he thought of all the pain she had randomly caused him, all the hope she had so easily and callously destroyed, he just plain freaked out.

  There was a slight struggle, just enough for Katherine to get some traces of his skin under her nails. Then he stabbed her.

  He ran across the ball field to his truck and left. Then he stopped and called Dakota to tell her what had happened and say that he was going to turn himself in to the police. But Dakota’s initial reaction was that she was almost as much to blame for the murder as he was, and she convinced him not to do it. She promised him she would take care of it.

  She had connections.

  Dakota took care of it by sending me to the dugout to look for Katherine, then following with a crowd of kids. She took the photo of me beside Katherine’s body, then posted it on the Internet.

  So why were the police looking for me even though they suspected that a tall righty had committed the murder? Because they had the bloody murder weapon with my fingerprints. Because they had the photo of me beside Katherine’s body with the knife in my hand. Because I ran away from the murder scene. And because it was just possible, though unlikely, that I was ambidextrous and had knocked Katherine to the ground before stabbing her with the knife in my right hand.

  Finally, there was the possibility that the killer and I had acted together. That we’d planned it, and that even though someone else had been the one who’d stabbed her, I’d been an accomplice in the crime.

  Chapter 51

  October

  THE HUGE REDBRICK Fishkill Correctional Facility sits on a hill surrounded by green lawns and double rows of tall chain-link fencing laced with razor wire. To enter you go through a metal detector and then several sets of thick doors, some made of reinforced steel and shatterproof glass, others made from heavy steel bars.

  Inside, you are in a world of sharp right angles and hard flat walls. There is no softness in prison. No comfort. Sounds echo and amplify. The click of footsteps on hard concrete, the clack of locks opening and closing, the clank of barred doors banging shut.

  Inside is only the smell of body odor. There is no sweetness or perfume.

  Inside, now, are my brother and Slade.

  As I walk down the hall to the visiting room, I find it almost impossible to believe that this has happened. Until Sebastian attacked my father, no one in our family had ever been sent to prison. No one we knew had ever spent time in jail. We were just everyday people with everyday jobs and everyday interests. Living in an everyday town.

  Here the visiting room is a series of heavy reinforced windows with partitions between them. You sit on a stool that is bolted into the floor. You pick up a phone. You look through the thick glass at the person on the other side.

  For the last two years, I’ve come here once a week to visit Sebastian on the other side of that glass. I’ve grown used to that. Today, for the first time, it’s Slade I’m here to see. Mr. Lamont couldn’t afford his bail, so Slade will have to stay here until his trial.

  When I see him through the window, my insides churn and I can’t help bursting into tears. Slade’s face is drawn and his jaw is covered with stubble. He presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes, as if t
o stem his own tears. We talk about what it’s like inside. He tells me he’s seen Sebastian in the cafeteria, but they haven’t yet had a chance to speak. We talk about what’s going on in Soundview. But the more we talk, the more I’m aware of what we’re not talking about. Finally I have to bring her up.

  “Dakota’s parents sent her away to a private boarding school in Europe,” I tell him. She’s been charged with a felony—reckless endangerment—but unlike Slade’s dad, her parents were able to afford the bail that guarantees she’ll return for her trial.

  When I tell Slade about Dakota’s going away, he nods and stares down at the counter on his side of the window.

  “Slade?”

  He looks up, his eyes sad, his face etched with regret.

  “That story you told me, about how Dakota hit on one of the workers doing construction in her kitchen?”

  He nods. “It was me.”

  “And you didn’t tell me because she was supposed to be my friend? Or at least we were in the same crowd?”

  Again he nods. “It was back when you were still happy about being with them.”

  “And then, when you came back from Guard training …” There’s no reason to state the obvious—that Dakota was waiting to tell him that I was seeing someone else, but that she was there for him, and that her mother could help him get a deferment so he wouldn’t be deployed. Slade stares down at the counter again and I can only blame myself. I’d broken his heart and he’d come home feeling hopeless and in agony, and there was Dakota, sending him naked photos of herself, offering her version of comfort.

  “You stopped doing your knee exercises when you found out your unit was going to be deployed?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I stopped way before that. Like, from the moment I told Dad I’d go into the Guard. First I was hoping I’d fail the entrance physical. I mean, if I did, Dad couldn’t blame me, right? But the doctors okayed me. Then I hoped the knee would blow out during training. I could feel it getting weaker, but it didn’t give. And then, when they told us we were being deployed, I really freaked.”