The Mad Chopper

by Fred Rosen

  “There’s blood on that hatchet,” Reese reminded him.

  There was no such thing. The hatchet had not been recovered. But if they could get Singleton to admit that he used it to cut the girl’s arms off, maybe he’d give them a confession. Lord knew they were working hard enough to get it.

  “Well, if there’s blood on that hatchet, I don’t know anything about it, because I sure as hell didn’t use it.”

  “This young lady picked you out of a photo lineup and is saying that you’re the man that did it. She says that you’re the man that chopped her arms off.”

  “Now what did I do to make her mad is what I’m trying to figure out?” Singleton asked, scratching his head.

  “She wasn’t mad. She was in pain. She was barely conscious. She described you and continued to describe you all the way along. All the way through,” said Breshears.

  “But …”

  “And as she got a little better, she described you more and more and more. And she’s the one that directed that composite of you.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you God’s truth about it, I don’t know what she—”

  “Don’t blame her.”

  “Because … I …”

  “Don’t give me the God’s truth unless you’re going to tell me the whole truth, Mr. Singleton,” Breshears continued.

  “I’m telling you the whole truth, sir.”

  “You’re the one that’s going to have to live with it on your conscience.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you—”

  “And it’s obvious that you’re doing a poor job of it right now. Are you going to continue to be able to live like this, with this inside you, not letting it come out?”

  “I’m letting … I’m letting everything I know come out.”

  “The biggest concern that she wants to know right now is what happened to her hands after they were removed with the ax. She knows. She watched you. She watched you chop them off.”

  “I did not chop anybody’s—”

  “She could—”

  “I could not.… I could not …”

  “Maybe you couldn’t—”

  “… pull a weapon on anybody that.…”

  “Maybe you couldn’t, but you did.”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “She saw you do it. Three chops on the left arm. Five chops on the right arm. Then you threw her— in that gully.… You kicked her into that pipe …”

  “She’s lying!”

  “She got up and walked out, Mr. Singleton, and you didn’t know she’d survived.”

  “She’s lying!”

  “You didn’ t know she walked out. You left her there to die. You took those hands off to cover up a crime.”

  “I did not, sir.”

  “You didn’t want anybody to identity her because she got up and walked out. And when she walked out, she identified you. She even said she feels sorry for you, Mr. Singleton. She really feels sorry for you now.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you guys the truth about it. I don’t know what I did to make her mad, and—”

  “I know what you did,” Breshears answered. “You cut her arms off, that’s what you did.”

  “I could not use a weapon on anybody.”

  “Why did you tell your ex-wife you were going to blow her to hell with a shotgun?” Reese interrupted him.

  “Oh Christ, I don’t even own a shotgun.”

  “Mr. Singleton, what did you do with her hands?” Breshears asked.

  “Sir, I had … I don’t even know where the girl went to, that’s the reason I did not even realize what went on. I swear it!”

  “Are you going to be able to live with this? Are you going to be able to live with this without telling somebody? Are you going to be able to look at her face-to-face and say, ‘I didn’t chop your arms off?”

  “Well, I can look her right back and say that I did not do it, because something is definitely wrong there. Yes, sir, I will be able to do that.”

  “And she’s going to look at you and she’s going to tell you, ‘You’re the one who chopped my arms off.’”

  “Well, I can look her right back and say that I did not do it, because something is definitely wrong there.”

  “That’s right, something is wrong and we want to know why.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s got to be a reason, Mr. Singleton, why you did that.”

  “Could I get some more coffee? I did not chop that woman’s arms off. I got a terrible temper, I admit that. I don’t mind fighting, see, but insofar as using a weapon, no, I won’t. I wouldn’t even go hunting hardly anymore.”

  “What was it, Mr. Singleton, a last-minute thought to chop her arms off after you laid her down on the road?”

  “I never …”

  “Were you scared at the time?”

  “I did not …”

  “I would be scared at the time, Mr. Singleton. And I’d be scared right now, too.”

  “I—”

  “And I don’t think I could live with myself without telling somebody.”

  “I’m not scared because … like I told you the whole truth now and I’m gonna swear that’s all I know.”

  “You’re talking about a half a dozen drinks—not counting the ones that you spilled. You said yourself that when you sniffed that stuff that you didn’t know what it was. You also told us that you didn’t smoke marijuana.”

  “I didn’t … I told … I … told you I don’t smoke marijuana.”

  “Oh, then you were saying that you were blacked out during this period of time? First you woke up and you said Larry was driving, and then you said later that Pedro was driving.”

  “They both was driving.”

  “And that she didn’t like him because he was a fat Mexican.”

  “That’s … yeah, that’s right … that’s exactly what she told me.”

  “Then why doesn’t she say there were two other guys in the car?”

  “Sir, I don’t know.”

  “Because there weren’t two other guys in the car,” Reese explained.

  “Only one,” Breshears added.

  “You,” Reese finished.

  “There was two other guys in the car,” Singleton continued to insist, “and I took them right back into San Francisco.”

  “You know it would seem to me, Mr. Singleton, that if she had herself a stick and you were that afraid of her—”

  “Sir, it’s not a matter of being afraid. I wouldn’t … I don’t want to hurt the girl.”

  “Well, then why did you hurt her? That’s the reason we’re here.”

  “I did not hurt the girl. To my knowledge, no. She told me that she was twenty or twenty-one and had been hooking. And I told her to get off the greasy kid stuff. I said, ‘Hey, go for that. Go for one hundred dollars a day.’”

  “When did you tell her this?”

  “Sometime along there, I don’t know.…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And the other with it, see, but, uh …”

  “Oh, this was after you picked them up when she told you that she was a prostitute. Is that what she said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What words did she use? What words did she say?”

  “Well, she said she liked to suck cocks.”

  “So, automatically you assumed, ‘Well, she must be a prostitute.’”

  “I didn’t assume, I …”

  “Well, you were just saying you thought she was a prostitute.”

  “Well …”

  “And you’d given her a hundred bucks.”

  “That’s what I told her. ‘Well hell, come along with me to get a hundred bucks a night.’”

  “Did you give her money?” Reese asked.

  “Yeah, I gave it to her. About eighty dollars.”

  “Okay, when you gave her this eighty dollars, did she refuse to do anything then?”

  “No, she didn’t refuse to do anything. She took her goddamn clothes off.”


  “Just tore the blouse right off, huh?” Breshears asked sarcastically.

  “No, she didn’t tear the blouse off.”

  “How did she take it off?”

  “I’ll be damned to hell if I know. How does a girl take her clothes off?”

  “Well, I don’t know. When your hands are tied behind your back, it’s pretty difficult,” Breshears shot back. “You told her, ‘You’ll be all right if you do exactly as I say.’”

  “That’s a lie! That’s an absolute lie!”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “No, sir.” And Singleton violently shook his head.

  “Why don’t you tell us the truth?”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Singleton pleaded.

  “You told us the truth to the A & W station. Why don’t you tell us the rest of the truth?”

  “I am.”

  “Help yourself, Mr. Singleton,” Breshears said sympathetically.

  “Because … I … I can’t tell you anything different but what actually went on.”

  “The girl told us exactly what happened.”

  “So am I!”

  “Well, you stopped short and changed the story. She told the truth. She had nothing to hide. Her arms are gone. They’re never going to be put back on. She wants to know what happened to them.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Did you notice the ring on her hand?”

  “Sir, I didn’t notice …”

  “She also had a bracelet. Did the bracelet fall off when you chopped her arms off?”

  “I didn’t chop the woman’s arms off.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know who did?”

  “I don’t”

  “Well, let’s see if I can refresh your memory. She was in your van with you. She was hitchhiking. You picked her up. You said that. She identified your van. She identified your house. She identified you. She also said that you had a daughter that lived in Reno. She knew your name. You told it to her.”

  “Now! look—”

  “You stopped at the A & W station.”

  “There’s another Larry in this, too.” Singleton practically screamed.

  “The only problem, you said this Larry’s got blond hair, he’s got a beard or kinda straggly hair. But see, you have brown hair, bushy eyebrows, blue eyes, you have a bigger nose, and you’re much older. That’s the Larry she identified.”

  “Well …”

  “We saw the picture in the paper. We identified you with that picture in the paper. How do you think all of these things came about and came to you, Mr. Singleton? We know that you did it. What we’d really all like to know is: why?”

  “I did not do it. I could not do it.”

  “Maybe you couldn’t do it, but you did it.”

  “I could not do it.”

  “Maybe you can’t do it again, maybe you can do it again.”

  “Sir, I could not use a weapon on anybody.”

  “You might not use a weapon, but you used an ax. She saw you when you reached up and you let it go and you were holding her arm. She saw you cut her two more times and yank that arm off!

  “She saw you do it. She saw you pick up that ax and her hand. You grabbed her and you flipped her over and you grabbed the other arm and you cut that one off.”

  “That’s an absolute lie, sir.”

  “And then afterwards, you cut her loose.”

  “That’s an absolute lie. That woman was never tied up. That woman was never tied up.”

  “Never tied up?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you covered that up very well ’cause you took her hands, with the rope. Where did you put her hands? Did you throw them in the canal or did you throw them alongside the road?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you do with her clothes?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that? Do you expect this detective to believe that, Mr. Singleton?” Breshears said expressionlessly.

  “Well, sir, that’s all I know.”

  “Why would two guys who know nothing about your van, but have a gun, take an ax out of your toolbox and use that when all they had to do was shoot her?”

  “I can’t answer that question.”

  “Because they weren’t even there! You were the only one in that van.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Hell, you got scared. You got scared after you had sexual relations with her. You were petrified. You were afraid that she knew too much about you and she could turn you in and catch you and you didn’t have any alternative but to get rid of her. You were petrified and you were scared.”

  “No, I—”

  “Admit it!”

  “No.”

  “You would have to be a scared man who would cut a woman’s arms off.”

  “I could not …”

  “It would also have to be a scared man after he cut the woman’s arms off to make sure that she wasn’t dead.”

  “I’ll tell you the God’s truth, I did not … mutilate that woman.”

  “Don’t tell me the God’s truth, unless you’re planning on telling me the whole truth.”

  “I am telling you the whole truth.”

  “You’re not telling me the truth,” Breshears shot back. “You’re not only lying to me now, you’re lying to God. You’re going to go to hell and pay for it, let me tell you.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth …”

  “And, you know, Mr. Singleton, you’re over fifty years old now. Is that what you want? Is that the way you want it to end?”

  “Look, if I thought that I was capable of cutting anybody’s arms off … I just can’t conceive of it.”

  “That’s why you tried to kill yourself, Mr. Singleton.”

  “I didn’t try to kill myself.”

  “You just overdosed on pills, and with the combination of liquor, you ended up in the hospital, in the ICU, Mr. Singleton. Why don’t you face it? You can’t live with it, Mr. Singleton.”

  “Well …”

  “You’ve got to help yourself now. Now’s the time to help yourself.”

  “All right, now look. You can check it out. I was shook up about having cancer of the throat.”

  “I know you were shook up and I know something else that really shook you up, Mr. Singleton. That’s the fact that the girl lived and you didn’t think that she would and you’re scared to death. You’re shaking right now.”

  “I … I’m shaking right now. I’ll grant you that, because I can’t tell you what happened because as far as I know, that girl was alive the last time I seen her. And the last time I seen her, she had her clothes on. Now that’s as far as I can tell you. She had her clothes on the last time I saw her.”

  “Why don’t you tell us now? Tell us what happened,” Breshears gently implored him.”

  Breshears leaned forward on the table and examined Singleton.

  “You know, she described the color of your eyes perfectly. Light blue.”

  “Well, I don’t understand how …”

  “It’s funny how she could give such a good description of you and she doesn’t even remember anybody else in the van.”

  “And … I don’t understand why she’s mad at me …”

  Breshears glared at him, beginning to lose patience.

  “Maybe ’cause you chopped her arms off! And let me tell you, Mr. Singleton, she’s not mad at you. I told you before. She feels sorry for you.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the God’s truth ’cause—”

  “She knows what you’ve got to live through.”

  “I … I … could not ever do anything like that!”

  Breshears wasn’t impressed with his denial. “Her arms can be replaced with other devices,” he explained, “but your mind can’t.”

  It was not necessarily the best thing to say to a suspect under interrogation that he was, in effect nuts, b
ut Breshears was getting sick and tired of the old mariner’s steadfast denials.

  “I could not conceivably use a weapon on anybody,” Singleton continued to protest.

  Breshears smiled. “You couldn’t conceivably, but you did. Why? Why don’t you tell us?”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t use any weapon!” Singleton screamed.

  “An ax is a weapon, Mr. Singleton.”

  “I know that. I’m not stupid.”

  Breshears had to wonder.

  “I don’t know what she’s mad at me about. I mean—”

  Breshears decided to take another tack. Maybe Singleton would respond better to compassion, no matter how manufactured it was.

  “I can realize your not wanting to remember,” the cop began gently, “or trying to forget what happened.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Come on, there’s got to be a reason that you did it,” Reese broke in reasonably.

  “I’m not trying to forget anything,” Singleton protested. “I’m only telling you as it actually was.” Singleton warmed to his topic. “Now I got a gun and a knife there with me in the van. I told you the damn truth about it. I tried to convince those two idiots and I think that I did a good job of that, telling them we should go back to San Francisco. And I told them, all we have to do is go to the bank tomorrow morning and we’ll have all the money we need.”

  “I have a question here,” Breshears said dubiously. “You said ‘tomorrow morning.’ Tomorrow morning was Saturday. Is the bank open down there on Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “Then how come you told them it was open on Saturday?”

  “Well …”

  “Go on, tell us,” Reese baited him.

  “Well, I had a little trouble talking. But I mean, Larry could have figured that out.”

  “There’s one bank, one bank in the whole city that’s open day and night. It’s on Market Street. That’s the Bank of America, that’s a day-and-night bank. That’s the only one. You didn’t point them to that bank. You pointed them to a bank that was going to be closed.” Breshears looked down at his notes. “You had pointed them to a bank on Sixth and Mission.”

  “I showed …” Singleton began weakly, and then his voice trailed off. He was caught in a big lie and he knew it.

  “You dropped them off at Sixth and Mission after you showed them where the bank was. You said it was one block right there and what street is that bank on?”

  “Well, Crocker Bank is on Market over there.”