Nick grinned. “Okay. I’ll leave you a message tomorrow.”
Polaski waved for Nick to return.
“Got to go.” He paused and looked at her. “See you tomorrow?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow.” She motioned to the room. “Give Lugino my regards.”
“You gonna watch?”
She smiled without meeting his gaze. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
He thought briefly about the prospect of a dinner alone with Sam. Apart from work, they hadn’t been alone since that night. She’d always kept at least one boy around as a barrier. Or maybe there was just always a boy around. He reminded himself that tomorrow would just be two friends having dinner. With a quick breath, Nick entered the interview room and sat down next to Polaski.
They had already agreed that Nick would take the regular questions and Polaski would butt in when they didn’t like Lugino’s answers. A classic good cop, bad cop.
Nick cracked his knuckles to relieve some of the tension that had built up in his body and forced his mind back to the case.
“You ready to talk to us, Lugino?” Nick asked.
The man nodded, looking exhausted.
Nick flipped on the handheld recorder and placed it in front of the suspect. “Please state your full name for the record.”
“James Lee Lugino.”
“Date of birth,” Nick continued.
“March twenty-four, nineteen fifty-three.”
“What was the nature of your relationship with Sandi Walters?”
Lugino furrowed his brow.
“How did you know Sandi Walters, Mr. Lugino?”
Lugino nodded. “She was my girlfriend.”
“But she was with someone else, maybe even married to him. Sandi was with Mick Walters, wasn’t she?”
He shook his head. “They weren’t together, and they never got married. He’s Molly’s dad, is all.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
Lugino shook his head. “He’s basically a good guy. Sandi and I were good together. They weren’t.”
“You sure Sandi wasn’t planning to get back with Mick? Maybe that made you jealous? Maybe you lost your temper?”
Lugino shook his head. “Ask Sandi’s mom, ask Mick. Hell, you can even ask Molly. Sandi and I were together, Mick’s around for Molly’s sake, but Sandi wasn’t interested in him.”
Nick continued to question Lugino on his relationship with Sandi Walters, when they met, where they went. He’d already heard it three times, but this time it was official. This time it was being recorded. It wasn’t going anywhere. Even as he spoke, he wondered if the lab would get any more information on the case—some other lead to follow, a match to the print.
“Do you use alcohol?”
He nodded.
“Out loud, please, Mr. Lugino.”
“Yes, I drink sometimes.”
“How about drugs?”
“No.”
“Did you ever take drugs with Sandi Walters?”
“No,” he answered again.
Nick didn’t need to see Polaski’s reaction to know Lugino was lying. He was a bad liar.
“Have you ever taken drugs, Mr. Lugino?” Polaski interrupted, leaning over the table and pushing his scarred face toward Lugino.
The suspect looked around the room and then closed his eyes before answering. “Yeah, a long time ago I did.”
“Don’t lie to us again,” Polaski warned.
Lugino looked at Nick for help.
“What sort of drugs?” Nick asked.
Lugino shifted in his seat, the plastic chair making a cracking sound. “It was a long time ago. What difference does it make?”
“Answer the question,” Polaski ordered tightly.
Lugino wiped a hand across his forehead. “Yeah, I used to do drugs.”
“What sort of drugs?”
The man shrugged, though he appeared anything but relaxed. “I don’t know—pot mostly. Some acid, ’shrooms.”
“What about heroin?”
Lugino nodded.
Polaski made a low sound like a growl.
“Yeah, some smack once or twice maybe.”
“Methamphetamine?” Nick continued like he was reading off a laundry list.
Lugino gave him a blank look.
“Crank,” Polaski added. “You ever do crank?”
Lugino looked down at the floor. “Yeah, probably, but a long time ago.”
“Cocaine?”
Lugino looked relieved. “No. I never did coke.”
Nick knew it was too expensive. “What about the night of July twelfth? Were you taking drugs then?”
He shook his head.
“Please answer out loud,” Nick said.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” Polaski asked.
Lugino ran a hand through his hair, which he had pulled straight and it was now standing on end in some places. The gray showed under the harsh halogen lights, and Nick noticed his skin looked gray too. “I don’t remember—maybe.”
“What sort of drugs would you have taken?”
“Pot, maybe some downers.”
“No heroin?”
Lugino squinted, turning his head to the side, perplexed, the way dogs did. “What?”
“Heroin,” Polaski repeated. “Smack, H, horse, scag. I thought you said you’d done heroin before?”
Lugino looked straight at Nick without blinking. “I didn’t. Not that night.”
“Did Sandi Walters take heroin that night?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t with her until later.”
“But you didn’t take heroin that night?”
He shook his head fiercely. “No.”
“Did you kill Sandi Walters?” Polaski asked.
Lugino shook his head, his eyes wide with the look of a man truly shocked. “No.”
“But you do admit having sex with her that night?” Nick continued.
Lugino nodded, his shoulders sagging. His hands in his lap, he dropped his head. “She told me to meet her at that field. She loved that place. There were a couple horses across from there. Hell, she’d even named the damn horses—Cupcake and Butterscotch.” He blinked hard, and his voice was rougher when he spoke again. “That night, I was late—almost a half hour, I think. She was just leaning up against the tree, almost naked.”
“Tell us what happened then,” Nick prodded
“I came to talk to her. I’d been drinking some. I remember she seemed out of it.”
“Out of it, meaning what?”
“Passed out.”
“Not moving?” Nick continued.
Lugino winced at the implication. “Yeah, not moving.”
“But you didn’t think she might be dead?” Polaski pushed.
“God, no. No. I never thought that. I thought she’d passed out. She does that from time to time.”
“She was naked when you found her?” Nick added.
“Wearing her underwear.” He touched his neck. “With these little branches in her hair.”
“And that didn’t strike you as unusual?” Polaski asked, clearly not buying the story.
Lugino seemed to crumple. “No. To be honest, Sandi always loved to be naked. She’d been doing heroin lately.” He looked up. “I haven’t, but she had. And it made her do some crazy stuff. It made her feel hot and she loved the feel of the air on her skin. So she was taking her clothes off all the time. It didn’t seem so weird. I thought it was kind of sexy.” The last word seemed to leave him small and deflated.
“And you had sex with her despite her lack of movement?” Polaski continued without missing a beat.
Lugino looked up at Nick, his eyes begging someone to stop the questions.
“Is that right, Mr. Lugino?” Polaski continued.
Nick sat back and listened. Nothing about Lugino’s reaction seemed off. Nick found it hard to buy the story about having sex with a dead woman without knowing it, but stranger things had happen
ed.
“Yes. I had sex with her.” His head down, Lugino’s shoulders shook, and Nick was fairly certain he was crying. His voice quivering, he told the story again. When she hadn’t moved after sex, he tried to rouse her. That was when he figured out she was dead. In a moment of panic, he’d bolted.
“You didn’t take her underwear off?”
He shook his head.
“Please answer the question.”
“No. I didn’t take them off.”
“How did you have sex with her without removing her underwear?”
He motioned to the side with his hand. “I just sort of, moved them to the side,” he said without looking up.
“You didn’t make any markings on the body?”
Lugino looked up at Polaski. “No.”
“You didn’t put anything on her foot?”
“No.”
“Do you chew gum, Mr. Lugino?”
He frowned. “Gum?”
“Right. Do you chew gum?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Gets stuck in some crowns I’ve got.”
“How about Ms. Walters?”
“You mean about gum?”
“Right.”
Lugino nodded. “Yeah, Sandi likes—liked gum.”
“What kind?”
“Big Red.”
“Any others?”
“No. Mostly just that one, I think.”
Nick stopped and watched Lugino, starting to feel sorry for the guy. Nick pictured him realizing Sandi Walters was dead after having sex with her and rushing off. How long would it be until Lugino could close his eyes without thinking about having sex with a corpse? Would he ever?
“Do you know a woman named Karen Jacobs?” Nick asked.
Lugino sniffled and looked up, the cheeks above his beard red and splotchy. “Who?”
“Karen Jacobs?”
Lugino stared at the far wall and then shook his head. “No. I never heard of her.”
“How about Charlie Sloan?”
Lugino frowned. “That name’s familiar. He work at Denny’s with Sandi?”
Nick glanced at Polaski, who shook his head. He lifted the recorder off the table and pressed the stop button. Then he followed Polaski out of the room.
“I don’t buy that sex thing. He’s got to be lying,” Polaski said when they’d shut the door on Lugino. “Who the hell could have sex with someone and not realize they’re dead? It’s too sick.”
Nick rubbed his eyes. Damn, he was tired. “I agree it sounds hard to believe. But he didn’t even blink at the sound of Karen Jacobs’ name or Charlie Sloan’s.”
“Maybe he didn’t know their names,” Polaski continued. “Doesn’t mean someone didn’t tell him about the case. It’ll be easy to check if his blood type matches the semen at the scene. He’s admitted he was there. It’s got to be him.”
Nick nodded, not sure what he thought anymore. His mind kept coming back to the evidence. The evidence pointed at Lugino. His fingerprints, the semen, it was enough to close the case. “See if he’ll agree to toxicology. Maybe we can find something that proves he’s lying. And we’ve got a print on the body. We’re running him against that.”
Polaski nodded and headed back into the interview room.
But he knew what the D.A.’s office would want—and it was the one thing he couldn’t give them. What was the damn motive?
Chapter Seven
In restless sleep, Gerry shifted against the hard, cold surface that felt like the floor of his cell. He was out of jail. He was free. What was the cold? It should be warm here. Opening his eyes, he turned his shoulders and touched the rounded porcelain of the bathtub. He was in his bathroom—the bathroom of his apartment. It should’ve been a relief. He should have been thrilled to realize he was no longer trapped, no longer behind bars.
But in the distance he could still hear them chanting. “Pervert. Pervert. Pervert.” It was like a steady drum against his skull. He was surprised he’d slept at all. Exhaustion and fear had driven him from his bedroom. The bathroom was the only room without a window. They had broken the glass the first night.
Finally, after midnight, they had been forced by the police to leave him alone long enough to get the window boarded up. But the board didn’t keep out the chill or the noise, and the small apartment had left no alternative but that bathroom.
Even worse, there would be no relief from the tiny apartment. He had applied for a dozen jobs in the area, but every one had turned him down flat. They knew who he was. They weren’t going to have anything to do with a pedophile. They didn’t call him that, though. No one did. They said things like “sicko” and “freak.” He supposed they were right. He was, wasn’t he? He could change, but not if they didn’t leave him alone.
Without sleep, his mind did crazy things. He no longer had control. It was like being on drugs. He just needed a chance—an opportunity to prove himself again. If they would just leave him alone.
But no one would give him that chance. There was no good transportation here, and without a car he couldn’t look for jobs further than a couple of miles from his apartment.
The last time he left the apartment to pick up groceries, he had called his brother in Fairfield. Bobby hadn’t even heard three words before he’d hung up. Gerry guessed he couldn’t blame Bobby much. It was probably hard for a normal guy to have a brother like him. Gerry didn’t dare call his parents. And his sister’s husband hated him. Gerry knew Stan would keep her from helping him.
His mother would have helped him if she could. But his father kept too close an eye on her for her to do much. The one time she’d come to visit him in prison, his father had found out about it and threatened to kick her out of the house. She’d written him a very nice letter explaining how sorry she was that she wouldn’t be visiting anymore, or probably writing either. She had always been passive, and he knew she wouldn’t ever stand up to his father. He hadn’t written her back. He had enough on his conscience without worrying that she’d get kicked out of the house on his account.
Pulling himself out of the bathtub, Gerry wiped at a wet spot on his sweats caused by a leak in the old faucet. He’d tried the floor the first night, but there was a worse leak from the wall pipe that had soaked his blankets. At least the tub’s leak was a slow, steady drip instead of the small fountain that sprang from the back of the toilet.
He looked around the apartment. A hot plate, an ancient refrigerator, and a rust-coated sink were his kitchen. A single bed now covered with broken glass was his bed. He had sixty-seven dollars to his name.
At least in jail he had a warm meal and a clean bed—most of the time. And he had learned to cope there.
“What’re you in for?” one of them would ask.
Gerry would turn around and look the man in the eyes. It was always the big men, too. Big, meaty men with red hair and necks and goatees, tattoos, and buck teeth and ten-gallon bellies who pumped iron to pass the time because they’d never learned to read.
“Tax fraud,” he’d said the first time.
The meaty man had eyed him top to bottom. “IRS?”
He had nodded quickly—too quickly, it turned out.
“That’s federal. You in a state pen.” The convict leaned over and shoved out his chest and a tattoo with the words “dead meat” in uneven blue writing.
“Gerry beat the rap on that one,” Wally, the librarian, cut in. “Ended up in here for assault in the process.”
The man looked at Wally and then back to him for confirmation.
He nodded—less quickly this time.
“What weapon?”
A 1040? “A bat. I had a bat.”
“You beat someone up with a bat?” the beefy man continued.
Wally nodded him along.
“Yep. My lady. I beat her with a bat.” His mind started to roll. “Was her who turned me in.”
The beefy man nodded and gave him a smile that looked more like a shark about to attack. “Me, too. ’Course I killed my old lady
.” He looked around and added with a smile, “I still say not guilty, though. She had it coming, know what I mean?”
Gerry nodded without comment.
The beefy man left, and Wally closed the space between them. “I’m going to tell you a story a guy told me when I got here.”
He focused his attention and nodded.
“Was a guy here from N.A.M.B.L.A.,” Wally began. “You know them?”
He shook his head.
Wally lowered his voice. “The Northern American Man Boy Love Association. Their slogan is ‘sex by eight.” ’
He furrowed his brow. “Eight?”
“Years old.”
Gerry frowned. “Oh.”
“Not an especially popular group. They don’t get caught, most of them. They’ve got the most extensive underground system of any of the associations. But this guy, he got caught.”
He nodded, waiting.
“They brought him here,” Wally continued. “He refused to lie about the group he belonged to.”
There was a short silence. “And?”
“Guards found him two days later sitting on a broom handle.”
“Sitting on it?” Gerry asked.
“It was shoved so far up, it was coming out his mouth.”
He grimaced.
Wally looked around. “Don’t you tell them what you did—ever. They’ll kill you. You look guilty, too. Best learn how to lie. Make it violent. Little guy like you—make ’em think you’re crazy. Keeps them away.”
“Crazy?”
Turning his back, Wally started shaking and howling as he headed out of the room. He got strange looks, true—but they all stayed away from him.
Every day he’d pictured that broom handle and worried about someone finding him out, learning about all the bad things he had done. Eight years he’d lived with the fear, submitting to guard cruelty and politics, even kissing up, spit-shining shoes and pressing shirts to keep it quiet. Did the guards even know? He wasn’t sure. They’d always acted like they had inside information, but really they seemed no more informed than most of the inmates—only crueler and more violent.
He couldn’t forget the lady cop who had arrested him that last time, the time he finally got sent to jail—Sam Chase. The invincible Sam Chase. She’d been small and beautiful for an adult. Freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, she almost looked like a kid to him. A perfect little kid name, too. He wished they’d had guards like her in prison. Of course she’d been real mad at him when she caught him in the playground with the kids, but he liked her anyway. She was his only friend out here. And now at least he could see her. He was going to get her attention now. He had the perfect plan.
(2002) Chasing Darkness Page 7