Eight in the Box

by Raffi Yessayan

  “I thought that pin on his lapel said NRA.”

  “I wish. He took the NA course with the FBI back when he first made sergeant twenty years ago. He wears that pin every day. Civilians don’t realize what it is. I mean, what high standards! They even make you get a high school diploma, or its equivalent, before they let you in!”

  “All that matters is that the guy wearing that pin is going to ruin our careers.”

  “My career,” Mooney corrected him. “Stop crying about it and tell me what you’ve come up with on that funeral home angle.”

  Maybe Mooney was right. No one was going to get in their way while they were working the case; and once it was solved they would be heroes. They just needed to focus on their work and they would be fine. “Nothing yet. But I’m looking into every one of them. If there’s anything there, I’ll find it.”

  CHAPTER 57

  The mayor, flanked by the DA, and the Boston Police Commissioner, was having his usual difficulties saying exactly what he meant. Speaking without notes as he did, the man had a tendency to ramble and say too much. Halfway through a press conference updating the media on the progress of the investigation, the mayor announced that “The FBI profilers called in to assist on this case believe the killer has committed similar crimes, maybe in another city.”

  “Good luck with that lead,” Richter said to the images on the television screen. The Tucson police had had no reason to focus their investigation on him. How would the police in Boston ever link him to what had happened so many years ago?

  Sunday night, the end of spring break, but Richter hadn’t gone away because he needed to study for midterms.

  Richter’s eyes were sore and his brain was pudding from reading all day. A trip to the men’s room, a splash of water on his face and neck, a quick lap around the University of Arizona’s main library and he’d be ready to focus again.

  The floor seemed deserted. Then he spotted a young woman sitting at one of the long tables. She looked up and gave him a nod as he walked past. Maybe she needed a break too. A good discussion to get the blood flowing. Richter twisted his head awkwardly to see the title of the small book she was holding. A treatise on anarchy.

  “I am the chairwoman of the Anarchists Club.” She smiled at him.

  “The Anarchists Club?” he asked. “An organization for people who don’t believe in organizations and their rules—isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  “Up to the Os in your vocabulary builder?” she sniped. Richter couldn’t tell how tall she was because of the way she was sitting. She had dark hair and brown eyes. If she lost the glasses she would have been pretty. She half smiled at him, as if to say she was tolerating his comment, certainly not closing the door to the conversation. “It’s not that we don’t believe in organizations, per se. It’s all forms of government that we oppose, because governments, by their very nature, are oppressive. We examine the androcentric derivation of the rules and strictures that shape our lives in traditional forms of government.”

  “Androcentric? Up to the As in your vocabulary builder?” he asked.

  She smiled.

  “Look,” he said, pulling a chair from another table and sitting with his chest against the chair back, “men may have formed the governments and laws, but those laws are there to protect women as well.”

  “We women have to stop thinking of ourselves as victims who need to be given structure in our lives by those who oppress us.”

  She took off her reading glasses and looked at him more closely. She really was pretty. As she used her glasses to punctuate her points, Richter saw that her nails were bitten to the quick.

  “So you’re not so much against rules as you are against government forced on you by men. You’re more feminist than anarchist.”

  “The whole concept of government is a male idea, so feminism and anarchism go hand in hand,” she said. “I don’t believe we need laws, because people in their natural state are good.”

  “John Locke, right? I’m more of a Thomas Hobbes fan, myself. Life in a society without laws would be ‘solitary, nasty, brutish and short.’” Richter smiled. “All you need is one person like Hitler and that throws off your whole system.”

  “Hitler was able to do what he did because of androcentric concepts like nation, race and superiority. Without those prevailing ideas, he never could’ve thrived.”

  Richter was pleased to see that she wasn’t a pushover. She liked to argue and didn’t let her emotions get in the way of reason. A young philosopher in training. “What about Nietzsche and his notion of superiority, that a superman could make the decision as to whether another should live or die? Without our laws, what would prevent an intelligent, logical, rational person from coming to the conclusion that less valuable members of society are dispensable?”

  “Again, you’re falling back on your male paradigms.”

  “Unless you’re going to have an all-female society,” he said, “you’re going to have male influences. And if you’ve got males, you need laws to control their violent impulses. Let me ask you a question: Do you think it’s wrong to kill another human being?”

  “Excellent question,” she said. “This is one of my basic problems with government. Sometimes killing is sanctioned—executions, times of war. Other times it’s punishable by death or imprisonment. There’s no consistency in the application of your laws.”

  “If you want consistency, then you should be able to answer my question. Should we never be able to kill or always be able to kill?”

  Her dark eyes and long brown hair, which fell down past her shoulders, were a nice change from the countless blondes on campus. “For starters,” she said, “if we had no television, no violent movies, no pornography, no men brought up with football mentalities, we might have a shot at living our lives in peace without the restrictions placed on our civil liberties by a government.”

  “Plato never watched television and never played football. He wrote in The Republic, ‘Mankind censures injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.’ You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.

  “Of course it’s wrong to kill.”

  “Is it inherently wrong, or have our laws just made it illegal?”

  “Inherently wrong.”

  “Perfect. You believe it’s inherently wrong, but what if I don’t? Without laws, government, police, prosecutors, what would stop me from killing?” He suddenly realized how loud his voice had gotten. They both stopped to see if they were disturbing anyone, but their section of the library was deserted. “I’m with Plato. The only reason it’s wrong to kill is because we don’t want others killing us.”

  “So you really don’t think it’s wrong to kill?” she leaned toward him intently and asked in a voice just above a whisper.

  “I’m not saying it shouldn’t be illegal to kill. I’m trying to make a distinction between something being morally wrong and its being illegal. Our society is becoming devoid of any sense of morality, so why hold on to this hollow belief that there is something morally wrong with killing another person? You said it yourself, sometimes we sanction killing of humans and sometimes we condemn it. I think we should be consistent.”

  “We couldn’t exist as a society if we said it was okay to go around killing one another.”

  “Of course it has to be illegal to kill people, but it’s no more wrong than killing any other living creature. I eat meat every day. We as a society have massive factories where we kill animals on an assembly line and package the meat neatly so we can eat it at our convenience.” Richter had made these same arguments in his philosophy class and easily converted half the class to his view.

  “But those are just animals. It’s different with human beings. Human life is more valuable than farm animals or even pets.”

  “Life is life. Let’s say I have a loyal dog that loves me so much he runs to me and jumps on me, licking my face every time he sees me. He brings so much joy
into my life. Is my life any more valuable than his? Should someone be able to arbitrarily take that dog’s life?” Richter kept his voice low, but he could feel the anger building. He couldn’t allow that. He needed to control himself, not let emotion influence his argument.

  “I see your point with pets, but as much as I love animals, we have to place a greater value on human life. How can any society, male or female, exist if people don’t have the basic right to live? Look at early human civilizations,” she said, frustration shading her voice. “These would be situations where killing for territory, family or self-preservation would be accepted. Such societies were based on aggressive male tendencies. The androcentric creations of nationalism and race are just extensions of those ideals.”

  “So you think that if we had a society run by women we wouldn’t need laws to govern us?” he asked. “Let’s assume for a second that I’m living in that society. Without laws and the fear of being punished, what would stop me from getting up out of this chair”—he stood up—“walking over to you, and putting my hands around your neck?”

  When Richter’s hands first touched her cool skin he meant only to demonstrate how easy it would be to kill someone, shattering the naïve fiction that people are good and don’t need laws to control them. But it felt so good, better than he had imagined. He was pleased at how thin and supple her neck was, his hands wrapping around it neatly, tightening his grip around her throat almost instinctively. She looked shocked at first, then hopeful he was just trying to make a point and not really hurt her.

  He could feel her vulnerability as she strained to talk, to scream, to breathe. Her legs bumped under the table and she went after his fingers, trying to bend them back, but he was too strong. He felt her neck swelling, the blood backing into her chest and heart, trying to force its way to her brain.

  It was incredible, holding life in his hands. How many times had he dreamt of this moment, never knowing if he would have the will to actually do it? But could he go through with it? He could simply pull away and she would live. It was too late for that. She was staring into his face. And it felt good to watch her life slip away, knowing that he was in control of the decision to kill her or let her live. He kept his grip on her as she struggled and fought until her body slid back into the chair.

  People always thought about killing others when they were angry, but they seldom meant it. Richter had actually followed through on his desire, not out of anger, but simply because he chose to do it. He had wanted to know what it would be like to take someone’s life. The actual feeling was far more exhilarating than he had ever expected.

  He stood there for some time, overcome by this feeling of power. Suddenly he remembered that he was still in the library. Stupid. What was he thinking? He spun around to see if there was anyone behind him. He walked up and down the adjacent corridor. The book stacks were clear. They were alone.

  He started to walk away, and then stopped to look at her one more time. The pretty anarchist’s body was slouched in the chair with her head tilted back. Her eyes were open and bulging out of their sockets. The last thing they had seen was Richter. Her tongue was sticking out, her soft brown hair strewn across her face. It was a shame that she was going to look like such a mess when somebody found her. It seemed as though, in addition to losing her life, she had lost some of her dignity. For that he was sorry. He hurried back over to her, straightened her up in the chair and fixed her hair by brushing it off her face with the back of his hand.

  She still looked terrible. He rested her arms on the table and placed her head down as if she were sleeping. That was better. She looked peaceful as long as you couldn’t see her face.

  A flash of panic raced through him. Had anyone seen his face? Was the anarchist alone or was someone on the way right now to meet her for dinner? What about all the surfaces he had touched? He needed to stop, relax, think. He walked back into the men’s room and wet some paper towels. He wiped down everything he could think of, from the doors to the tables and the fixtures in the men’s room. As far as he was concerned he had never been anywhere near this woman, even if someone said they saw him with her.

  Richter knew what he had done was impulsive, foolish, but he didn’t regret killing her, although he never should have done it in such a public place. For now he simply needed to make sure that he didn’t get caught. Should he leave the library? No. He’d be seen leaving the building around the time of her death and immediately become a suspect. His best course of action would be no action. He would go back to the carrel where he’d been studying and continue as if nothing had happened.

  The police would be called when her body was found and Richter would say he was in another part of the library. The police would never expect the killer to stay in the library. Even if they did suspect him, it wouldn’t matter. As long as he stuck to his story, they would have no evidence against him. Never admit to anything. The best part was that he didn’t even know her name. If he didn’t know her, then he would have no reason to kill her. No motive. The perfect crime.

  He took a final glance at her. As he studied her he realized that only a few minutes earlier he’d been talking and arguing with this woman. She’d possessed intelligence, feelings, beliefs and beauty. She’d had classmates, friends and family. Now he’d touched all of their lives as well. Richter, a person they would never meet, had made a massive, lasting impact on their lives and they didn’t even know it yet.

  CHAPTER 58

  “You may proceed with your opening statement, Mr. Darget,” Judge Sterling Davis said from the bench. The jury had just been sworn in. Connie had studied them as the clerk administered their oath: “Do you swear that you shall well and truly try the issues between the Commonwealth and the defendant according to the evidence, so help you God?”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” Connie poured some water into a cup. He intended to put his evidence in quickly and efficiently, to get the jurors to focus on him rather than Judge Davis, who had spent the last two hours directing them through the impanelment process. Now it was Connie’s turn to let the jurors know that they were in his courtroom.

  Connie rose from his chair. Mitch, Brendan and Andi were in the back of the courtroom watching his opening, and in a way he was performing for them as much as for the jury. He wanted to convey to the jury that they were the most important people in the courtroom. There was an implicit deal that he struck with his juries through his mannerisms and the intonation in his voice: He was going to offer them his undivided attention in return for theirs.

  Connie stepped behind his chair and pushed it in. He had to show a concerned expression, a look that told the jurors he was so troubled by this case that he didn’t know where to begin.

  Once he felt that they were all watching him, and there was absolute silence in the courtroom, Connie looked up at the jury and scanned the panel, making eye contact with each of them before speaking.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Conrad Darget and I represent the Commonwealth in this case. During this trial you’ll hear testimony that this man, Victor Carrasquillo,” he said as he stood in front of the defendant, pointing his finger at his sullen, defiant face, “sold crack cocaine while in possession of a firearm. You will hear testimony from several police officers that they observed the defendant sell drugs to a known drug user and that when they placed the defendant under arrest he had a loaded nine-millimeter firearm in his waistband.”

  Then Connie explained the facts of his case and what he expected the evidence to be, making sure the jury felt that he was fair and unbiased toward the defendant, even while he advocated for a conviction. Connie could make the jury believe it was the evidence itself, not him, arguing and proving the defendant’s guilt.

  Until eight months ago, Connie had lost most of his trials. Last September Judge Samuels had pulled him aside and critiqued his performance after one of those losses. It was the last time Connie had taken Jesse Wilcox to trial.

  The door to Judge N
athan Samuels’s chambers was open. Connie rapped gently on the door frame. He wasn’t in the mood for any words of encouragement. He’d done such a pathetic job that even the judge felt bad for him. And not just any judge, but Judge Samuels, one of the toughest judges in the city.

  “Good evening, Mr. Darget,” Judge Samuels said. “Come on in.” When they’d built the new courthouse, the legislature made sure the judges were taken care of with lavish surroundings. The walls in Judge Samuels’s chambers were paneled with solid mahogany. The judge was an imposing figure behind his antique oak desk.

  “Your Honor, I know what you’re going to say. ‘Hey kid, don’t be down on yourself. You did a great job, but you had a typical Suffolk County jury. They never trust the police—’”

  “You think I called you in here to show you pity?” Judge Samuels asked. His usual stoic appearance changed to annoyance. “Young man, I brought you in here to inform you that you lost that trial before it ever started.”

  Connie was stunned.

  “You have no concept of how to pick a jury. I’ve presided over your last three trials, all acquittals. You never use your peremptory challenges to strike jurors.”

  “I like to assume that all jurors will honor their oath to decide the case according to the evidence.”

  “That’s your first mistake,” Samuels said curtly. “Jurors in this city come in here looking for reasons to acquit defendants. You need to convince the jury that there’s no way they could possibly find him not guilty.”

  “But, Your Honor, I thought I picked the ideal jury this time, with the perfect foreperson.”

  “That is precisely the problem, Mr. Darget. You picked an inadequate jury, especially the foreperson. She was barely out of college and working her first real job. That girl had no life experience to apply toward making a decision in a criminal case where a man faced imprisonment.”