Walking into the precinct, my chest pumped out, and my hand clenching my briefcase, the sound of my shoes tapping against the ceramic floor, mixed with squawking radios, manly voices and sweat in the air. “I’m here to see Det. Lazarus,” I told the front desk and waited. I’d been there so often to see Eddie over the years, and would simply walk to the back after giving the receptionist or desk cop a simple wave. Those days were over.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lazarus asked. His southern cocky charm could be disarming, but my heart was too broken for that.
“Mr. Carroll told me to come and talk to you about the Melancon case.”
“Glad to know he isn’t giving away those state secrets to the defense.”
“I’m just a paralegal.”
“Even I know that a good paralegal is what can do damage to a credible prosecution. So tell me, how I can help?” Lazarus asked.
“Did the Commonwealth let you know I was coming?’
“Yeah, they did. But I like to make you sweat a little.”
“Right,” I smiled at that, and cleared my throat.
“So, about the Melancon case. Can you tell me what made you arrest Thomas Melancon?”
I didn’t want to play games or leave room for personal questions. If I was lucky, I’d leave without having to see Eddie. My stomach flip-flopped, and my hands trembled.
“I’m sure George told Harry this, but Thomas wasn’t the first in our sites. But we couldn’t overcome that all of the physical evidence left behind pointed to Thomas as committing the crime: hair, fibers, bullets located in his room, in his closet, spent shells that matched the gun he was found holding; blood on his clothes that matched the deceased.
“Could it be possible that he is being set up to take the fall?”
“Anything is possible, but what I can tell you is that the kid had motive, he didn’t like his mother and wanted to return home; means, the gun that he’d been trained to use was the weapon determined to be the murder weapon; and opportunity, everyone in the house was suffering from some sort of food poisoning, except him. We believe he tried to poison the family and when that didn’t work out, he decided to grab the gun and go from room to room to shoot them all, intentionally, in the face. A buckshot in the face means instant death. There is no coming back from that.”
“And the mother?”
“He didn’t count on her being in the bathroom. She came out, we think after hearing Vernon being shot, and him seeing her, he aimed and shot the gun, discharging it, but because she wasn’t truly clear of the bathroom door, her wounds were only superficial.”
“Superficial wounds after being shot at with a shotgun?”
“Miracles happen. He seemed to have shot her from a longer distance, which would lead to more superficial injuries.”
“Why didn’t he finish her off then?”
“That is something to ask your client.”
I couldn’t understand. If he hated his mother as much as his step-siblings, why didn’t he make sure that her injuries resulted in her demise too? All evidence led to Tommy: motive and opportunity? Yes. Means? Not so much.
20
"This came in for you, Emili," said the receptionist. She handed me a mailer. It was addressed to Harry's attention and from the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.
"Did you tell Harry?" I asked, taking the opened package from her
"Sure did. He told me to tell you to have a look at it, and that he'd get with you to speak about it when he got back from his hearing with the Alcohol Beverage Control."
"I thought that wasn't until next week?" I clicked on the computerized calendar. A civil representation before the board could take hours.
"They pushed it up. He told me when he headed out to not worry about it. That he needs you to concentrate on the Melancon case.
Yeah, the case that had been ruining my dreams and haunting my nightmares.
Taking the envelope to my office, I opened it and popped it into my computer’s DVD-Drive, and waited for the video to begin. On the monitor, I saw Tommy seated across from Det. Lazarus, and in the corner of the room sat Kristy, her arms crossed.
Nuances. The truth is told in nuances. Back in the days of seminary, and even undergrad, we'd been taught how to read a crowd, in order to know if the message from the pulpit was hitting its target. The art of manipulation. I could see from the slightest of movements how the situation was affecting Kristy, but I couldn't tell if the situation was her having to be in the same room as her son, a supposed murderer, or something else.
"Ms. Melancon, you signed the waiver allowing for us to question your son in your presence?" Lazarus asked.
"Yes," she practically yelled. "I know he did it. He deserves to die just like his siblings did!"
"Ma'am, I know that you are very emotional, but is there anyone else who can be here for your son?"
"No, all he has now is me. He always wanted to be a smart ass and have all of my attention, and now he has it. If I'd had known what a mess you'd cause, I would have gone through with that abortion. You're nothing to me, and I hope you rot for this," she screamed.
"Whoa, now," Lazarus stood up, running his hands through his hair. "Why don't you come on outside with me, and we'll get a child's advocate down here for Tommy?"
"Why don't you tell the officer the truth? Tell them how you planned on killing us! Tell them how you planned on killing us in our sleep and then running back to the man you think is your dad."
The disdain in her voice, rage and hatred, it all aligned with my theory, until Tommy opened his mouth.
"Alright, alright," he said, "I did it. I did it. Just make her go away. Make her go away," he sobbed.
"You can question him without me here. I don't care." Kristy rose and stomped out of the interrogation room, leaving Lazarus to follow.
I continued to stare at the screen, feeling the anguish of a kid with no one present who seemed to care. His mother was the custodial parent since his father had relinquished custody back to her.
After a couple of minutes of him just sitting there, Lazarus rejoined him, setting down a plastic bottle of soda on the table.
"I know this is a difficult situation. Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Tommy shook his head no. Twisted the top off of the bottle and took a drink"We just want to clear some things up. Do you understand?"
"Yes." Tommy took another sip.
"Do you like to play football," Lazarus asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Which position?"
"My dad thought I'd make a great quarterback, so I've been doing a lot of practice with that, trying to get my arm up to play pro. What did she mean about my dad?"
“She’s never said that before?”
“She’s never said a lot of things before.”
Even from the camera’s angle and distance, I could see Tommy’s anguish. He pulled up the edge of his t-shirt and wiped his face.
"Is that what you want to do, play professional football?"
"Yes, sir. I've been playing football since the peewee league and working hard on that." He raised his arms and pretended to throw a football.
"And your family? Kid brothers and sisters? Did they ever play with you out at the house?"
"Yes. We'd play as much as we could, which usually meant me passing the ball and have them running towards the touchdown line. It was a lot of fun."
"Joy wanted to help me keep my arm in shape." He frowned. "She said she'd be at my upcoming game. That she'd be my biggest cheerleader."
"Can you tell me about Joy?"
"She's brighter than any star, and she's made living down here possible. Every night, she'd tell me a story that she'd made up about a princess that could build something. She made me feel like a part of the family."
"Why did you kill her then?" The question was barely audible.
"I didn't, and I swear it."
"But I thought you said you did."
"I know. I didn't. I didn't do anything."
/>
"Are you sure about that?"
The interview went back and forth, with Tommy saying he'd done nothing wrong, and Lazarus pressuring him to answer again.
He handled him not like the child he was, but more like a criminal he believed him to be.
"We have a polygraph machine, and it can tell us the truth of the matter."
"I'm really sorry, but I am telling the truth."
"You left the house after an argument with you mom, and then what happened?”
"I know what you want to hear: Mom and I argued. I told her that I hated her and ran to my room, slammed the door and was hoping to leave out of the bedroom window, and when I walked in, I saw the smaller ones, Joy, Gary, Pauline, and Glenda resting. They lay in their beds, breathing with sweat glistening their foreheads. I took a tissue and wiped their foreheads. It wasn't so warm in there, though.
“Joy must have seen me or I was too loud. She called my name and said, ‘I’m thirsty.’”
To be so young, I knew Lazarus knew the techniques of how to pull on Tommy's heartstrings. “Here you go, kid,” he said, offering him a box of tissues.
‘“I’ve got to get out of here. I want to go home,’ I told her.
“’But if you do, there will be no one to play tea party with Meatball,’ Joy said. She was only four, and her favorite things were princesses and playing tea party with me, and her imaginary friends. No one else seemed to have time for it, I noticed.
‘“Get some rest and we can play again tomorrow,’ I told her.
“’Will you be here when I wake up,’ she asked.
“’Sure,’ I mumbled and pushed away from her bed.
“’No, you have to pinky promise.’ She stretched out her right hand, pinky curled.
“I promise, I said and fixed the covers around her and waited for her to drift off to sleep. When she snored, and the house seemed quiet enough, I opened up the bedroom window and snuck outside. I was set to meet the Newtons at the river. Since it was a new moon, and dark outside, I took a flashlight with me and headed there."
"Then what happened?" Lazarus asked.
"Then I came home and snuck back into the bedroom window I'd left out of."
"And then what?"
"I heard the muted sound of what sounded like pop-rocks. They came one after another.
“I looked around the room, and it was dark, except for the toddlers' usual night light. I thought with the noise, Joy would wake up, but she was quiet, and I didn't hear any snoring. She always snores, you know. So I...I... I checked, and when I got closer, her cover seemed covered with something. That's when I saw.... when I saw her."
"Dead?"
Tommy nodded. "They were all dead. All dead." The small cry became a louder unending sob.
The video ended and another video began. On this one, Kristy sat in the hot seat across from Detective Lazarus. She fidgeted.
"Can you tell me what happened that night?"
"There isn't much to tell besides my son, the child I gave birth to, decided to up and murder my kids." She crossed her arms.
"What do you remember?"
"Unfortunately, everything. A quick flash of light, followed by a crackling, smoke and reload. I saw his booted and muddied feet standing there, braced, standing shoulder's width apart, and to know he walked from one room to the next. Quickly one after another, snuffing out the life of my poor innocent children.”
"Go on."
"I was getting ready for bed, in the bathroom, or en-suite as Vernon always made me call it. I was doing my nightly ritual, when I heard a strange noise. I called out to Vernon, and only heard like a gurgle, like he was trying to tell me something.
"I'm headed towards the bedroom, and while walking out, there is then only a quick flash of light and smoke, followed by searing pain. I heard him reload, and I moved to close the bathroom door, to lock it, and to then hide."
"What then?" Lazarus asked.
"I crouched under the sink, and then I heard Tommy yelling my name. He kicked open the door with boots on, and the gun was in his hands. I saw blood on them, too."
"Do you know why he didn't shoot you?"
"Only because he didn't have any more bullets, I guess. The only reason I'm alive is because he ran out of shells,” Kristy said.
“And his father? You made a statement earlier about his father not being who he thinks.”
“What does that matter? He signed the birth certificate, didn’t he?”
The video recorded statement ended there. Truncated, I couldn't help but wonder how her statement aligned with the police report and evidence.
I noted the differences and flipped to the inventory of clothes which Tommy was found to be wearing. The police had neatly tagged and bagged it all before he'd been processed. No significant amount of blood had been located on them.
21
After a sleepless night and my mind going over the case, I couldn’t just sit there and wait for a solution to fall into my lap. Although I was supposed to help Mom with her event, I needed answers. Surely, the true killer would hear that we were sniffing around, and any evidence that might be hanging around would soon disappear.
“I’m missing something.” I pulled out the crime scene pictures and placed them down before me on the dining room table. I then took out my notepad, which included my notes of the building’s layout. The image of a muddied boot print caught my attention. It wasn’t mud mixed with grass, as if one were trekking back from the river, but mud as if one had been in muck, such as a muddy pasture.
Then, locating each of the autopsy and toxicology reports on each of the victims, I placed them under their corresponding picture.
Then, performing a background search through public records, I noticed the lien on the property where the Melancons and the grandparents lived, and since the murders, the lien had been paid in full. They had profited from the murders.
“Leave that file alone,” Mom chastised. “It’s the weekend, and we have to get out of here to set up everything.”
Pulling most of my hair back and pinning it up with a metal hairpin, I tucked my locks away, allowing the Southern Belle Curls to frame my face.
“It’s going to be a chilly one this morning Emili,” Mom told me, as she cinched me in my Civil War era gown. The idea of heading to Varina to sell home-made soap didn’t have its usual lure. All I wanted to do was work the case that I couldn’t seem to solve. I knew I had all of the pieces to solve the puzzle, but they didn’t seem to fit together.
“Time waits for no one, little miss,” she said to Kitt, and shoved the basket filled with wax paper and ribbons at her. I remember doing this when I was kid Kitt’s age. We’d all play dress up, and every day felt like a day of perfection, where we could pretend to be a Southern Belle, or at least pretend to live in the Antebellum South with their big dresses. We were happy then. We’d laugh and forget about what it meant to be creative in an average world.
We’d lace up our black reenactment civil war era shoes, make sure the laces in our hair looked prim and proper and then, we’d enjoy the sounds of the muskets shooting; listen to the cannon’s banging, older men calling out, screaming as if shot; and when the fireflies came, the magic could then begin.
The week had been hard, and my mind drifted to Olive, Kitt’s mother, who would take my hand, stare in the distance, and whisper as dusk came, “You know why the South lost the war?”
“Why?”
“So they could repeat it every weekend. Family has a way of doing that, right?”
I smiled, and my eyes blurred with unshed tears. “Chop, chop,” Mom said clapping her hands.
We’d loaded the car and drove to the outskirts of town, to where the county turned more urban.
“That grass is going to be wet. Might want to grab a pair of muck boots. Lord knows the last time they cleaned the lot from all of the horse manure.”
Boots...I saw his boots...boots. The pieces began to click together. Repeating.
“I c
an’t believe that Matthew Dawes wants to buy up all this land,” she said. Driving through the county in the direction of Varina, I watched the fields filled with still-to-be-harvested crops, tall stalks of corn, sugar cane, canola, barley, sunflowers, and wheat.
Mom seemed to always have her ear to the ground, knowing town gossip that I was never interested in. As we continued our drive, I noticed how close we were to the Melancon farm.
“Do you know anything about the Melancon’s out here?”
“Everyone knows about that family,” she said.
“What? And you’re just now telling me this tidbit,” I asked.
“I’m not one to gossip, Emili, and you know that.”
“It’s not gossip if it’s the truth.”
“Is that how you’re going to talk me into this?”
I tried to give her the puppy-dog-look, pouting. “Please,” I begged and batted my eyelashes.
“You know that that does not work as well as an adult woman, as it did when you were a child, right?”
“Come on Mom! What’s the gossip?”
“Kitt, cover your ears,” Mom said. She then turned on the radio to drown out our voices. “Back when I was a teenager, there was a horrible discovery out there on that cursed land. It’s rumored that Old Man Melancon, a young man himself, was the only one to escape his father’s rampage. His father had invited everyone over to celebrate the pending nuptials of his daughter, Sally, and a local boy named Porter. And after they ate, he found a way to single them all out, and killed them all. The adults he shot; the kids he suffocated and tossed in the pig pens, and then he buried the adults’ remains in shallow graves.”
“You’re just telling me about this?” I asked.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” her eyes blared. “I am now telling you something you never asked me about. It’s said that old man Melancon is the result of his father’s incestuous relationship with his daughter, Sally, and the only reason he escaped the same fate--he was found duct taped in the attic-- is because his father thought he was innocent and born out of love. And by killing the family, he could finally be with his daughter, who was set to get married the next day. Why? Do you think this has anything to do with now?”
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