The sheriff nodded. “I’m afraid so, Jenny. He went out to talk to this character about something earlier tonight, and then I got a call that said there was a lot of shouting coming out of the guy’s house, so I drove over to see what was going on. When I got there, the house was on fire and Sal, here, was kneeling over Kyle’s body. There was blood everywhere, and no one else around, so right now this boy here is my number-one suspect.”
As he spoke, the sheriff was taking the handcuffs off of me. Over the next few minutes, I was fingerprinted, photographed and asked to give a DNA sample. One of the deputies stuck a long cotton swab into my mouth and rubbed it around my cheeks, and then I was escorted into a shower. I was given a box to put my clothes in, and then handed a pair of boxer shorts, an orange jumpsuit that was two sizes too big, and a pair of plastic sandals.
“Take a shower, and use that liquid soap all over you,” the jailer said. “That stuff kills lice, so make sure you get it everywhere. When you’re done, rinse off and then put on the clothes we gave you.” He sat down in a chair, and it dawned on me that he was going to watch me.
I stripped out of my clothes and put them in the box, and the jailer got up to take it away. He set it next to the door, out of my reach, and then motioned for me to go on into the shower. I stepped into it, and saw that there were no valves, just a single button, so I pushed it. A spray of icy cold water shot out, but it quickly got hotter. Each time I pushed the button, the water sprayed out for about twenty seconds, so I pushed it several times just to get myself thoroughly wet.
The liquid soap was in a bottle, and I squeezed a handful of it out and spread it all over myself, including into my hair. The stuff tingled, and I assumed it was the insecticide that caused that sensation. It seemed kind of strange to think that I was spreading a form of poison all over my body, but I could also understand that they didn’t want to let lice get into the jail, so I just did as I was told.
When I had a good, thick lather all over me, I let it sit for a minute, but the tingling was becoming a burn. I finally reached up and pushed the button, letting the water rinse it all off of me. That felt good, as the burning sensation faded away. Finally, I stepped out of the shower, and found the big towel that was hanging there for my use. I dried off thoroughly, making sure to get my hair as dry as possible, then put on the boxers and jumpsuit. I slid my feet into the plastic sandals, and the jailer stood up.
He picked up the box that had my own clothes in it, and told me to go out ahead of him and turn right. I did as he said, and he escorted me down a hallway to an open door. He told me to stop, then went inside and handed the box of my clothes to someone else, before leading me further down the hall.
“Come in here,” he said, and I stepped into the room. There was a woman sitting at a desk, there, and the jailer told me to take a seat. The only empty chair was right in front of the desk, so I sat.
The woman looked up at me and smiled. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Doctor Jillian Reynolds, the staff psychologist here. I understand you have told the sheriff and the jailers that you don’t know who you are. Is that correct?”
I looked at her, and then shrugged my shoulders. “I think of myself as Sal, so I believe that might be my name. Beyond that, I’m afraid I don’t know much of anything.”
Doctor Reynolds didn’t lose her smile, but her eyebrows seemed to pull together a bit. “Really? Nothing at all? I should tell you, Sal, that claims of amnesia are pretty common in jails like this one.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said, “and I’m sure that most of them are pure fabrications. In my case, however, I have no memory earlier than just a few hours ago. If you were to ask me about my childhood, for example, I’m afraid I would sit here and stare at you blankly. There’s nothing there; there’s nothing from before I woke up in the basement of a burning house just a few hours back.”
She looked down at some papers on her desk, then at a computer screen. “What kind of work do you do, Sal?”
My eyes roamed around the office for a moment, and it dawned on me that I was searching for something that might jog my memory. I looked back at the doctor, and shrugged again. “I’m afraid I have no idea.”
“Where are you from?”
Once again, I caught myself looking around. “No clue,” I said. “I understand you have a hard time believing I’m telling you the truth, but I’m being as honest as I know how to be. The sum total of my knowledge of myself is that I woke up with the thought, ‘I am Sal,’ almost like I was trying to remind myself of that fact. I was lying on a table and dressed in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. The room seemed to be some kind of workshop, or maybe a laboratory, but there was nothing familiar in it. I smelled smoke and found my way to the stairs, then found that the house above me was on fire. Since I was pretty much naked, I hurried into what looked like a bedroom and found some clothes and shoes to put on, and then I was hurrying to get out when I tripped over a man lying in the floor. He was bleeding, and I tried to help him, but it was too late. A moment later, the sheriff suddenly showed up and arrested me for murder. He handcuffed me and put me in his car, and we sat there and watched as the house burned down despite the efforts of the firemen. He brought me here, and I’m sure you know everything that’s happened to me since that moment.”
Doctor Reynolds had been staring at my face as I spoke, and I saw that she was actually surprised. “Sal, the strangest part of this is that I see absolutely no sign of deception in your face or body language. You are showing no sign of doubt or any attempt to mislead me with your story, but I can tell that this situation has you worried, even scared.”
I barked out a short laugh. “If I wasn’t scared, don’t you think I’d be pretty crazy?” I saw a slight expression of humor across her face, and began to chuckle. “Okay, so obviously I’m crazy, because I can’t remember who I am. I guess what I meant was I’d be even nuttier if it didn’t scare me; would you agree with that?”
“Crazy isn’t exactly a term I would use to describe your condition,” she said. “One of the reasons I’m employed here is because I’ve been trained in techniques for detecting when people are lying, and frankly, I’m quite good at it. I’m not going to claim that I’m infallible, but I will tell you that I’m convinced that you believe everything you’re saying.”
I grinned. “Doctor, if we break that sentence down, what you’re saying is that if I’m telling a lie, then I believe it. Right?”
She gave a half shrug, with a grin of her own to soften it. “I’d say that’s a pretty good understanding. The thing is, there are people who are so good at lying that they can literally make themselves believe what they’re saying. For example, it’s quite possible for someone who has committed a murder to tell himself over and over and over that he didn’t do it, so that if a significant amount of time passes before he’s questioned about it, he could fool me, or even a lie detector.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the desk. “Even then, however, there are still minor signs that something isn’t quite right. I might not know that a person is lying outright, but I’d probably pick up on the fact that there was something he wasn’t telling me. It might not be enough for me to suspect he was actually guilty, and if I confronted him with it, it’s quite possible he could give me some off-the-wall explanation that I couldn’t entirely discount.”
“Okay,” I said, “what about me? Is there something I’m hiding?”
She stared at me again for several seconds, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re telling the truth, exactly as you perceive it. While I can’t see any reason for it, at this time you honestly can’t remember any details about your life before the event you just described.”
She turned back to her computer and began typing furiously. “I’m going to recommend that you have a complete physical examination, to see if there’s any sign of injury or trauma that could have caused this. In the meantime, however, our system is set up to expect people to have more than just a si
ngle name. Is Sal your first name or your last name?” She looked up at me suddenly.
I tilted my head to one side as I looked around again, trying to find an answer to her question. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “When I think it, I simply see it in my head as S-A-L. Seems more like a first name to me,” I shrugged, “but you’re the doctor.”
She smiled and nodded. “Okay, so for the moment were going to consider it your first name. That’s really all you got? When you think it, there’s nothing else that starts to come out?”
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said.
She nodded. “Any idea how old you are?”
Once again, all I could do was shake my head in the negative. “No ma’am,” I said. “I saw myself in the mirror, and if I had to guess, I’d say I might be in my mid-to-late 20s.”
“I’d say that’s a fair guess,” she said. “For the moment, were going to say that your age is twenty-seven, does that sound okay?”
“I suppose that’s probably as good a guess as any.”
She pursed her lips, and just sat there for a moment. “Well, Sal, in cases like this, we generally assign a temporary last name until we figure out who you are. Any thoughts on what you would want us to use?”
I opened my mouth, hoping that something might fall out, but nothing did. It was starting to get frustrating. I closed it again and just shrugged.
“Well, we’ll keep it simple, then.” She tapped on her computer keys for a few seconds, then turned back to me and smiled again. “For now, until we know different, we’re going to call you Sal Jones. That work for you?”
I grimaced, but nodded. “Sounds like a made-up name for some crazy story, but I guess that fits.”
She smiled again, and I returned it. She looked at the jailer, who was standing behind me, and nodded. “Okay, he’s all yours.”
Chapter 3
He took me into another room, and then pointed at several big bundles on the floor. “Grab one of those,” he said. “That’s your mattress, blankets, all that stuff.” I picked it up, and he told me to go back out and take a left. We went back down the hall in the opposite direction, and finally, I saw a door marked, “Inmate Housing.” The jailer took hold of the door handle, then spoke into a microphone on his shoulder, and there was another buzz as the door popped open. He motioned for me to go ahead of him, and I stepped into another hallway.
This one was lined with doors, and the jailer stopped at the third door on the right. Once more, he spoke into the microphone, and this door also popped open with a buzz. He motioned for me to go inside, and I did. The door closed behind me, and I was left standing there in the dim light cast by a fixture on the wall.
I was in an individual cell, with nothing but a single bunk, a tiny table mounted on the wall with a single stool sunk into the concrete right in front of it, and a combination toilet and sink. I set the bundle down on the bunk and unrolled it. There was a mattress, of course, a thin, flat pillow, sheets and a pillow case, and the blanket. There was also a plastic bag that held toiletries, like toothpaste, soap, a toothbrush and a comb. I laid that on the table as I made my bed.
I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it had been very dark when the sheriff had dragged me out of the house, and was still dark when we got to the jail. I didn’t feel tired, but since there was nothing else to do I decided to lie down and try to go to sleep. I must’ve lain there for a half hour or so, but finally I did drift off to sleep.
I dreamed, and in my dreams I kept going back to when I had awakened in the basement. I had absolutely no idea what might’ve happened to my memory, but it was as if I didn’t even exist before that moment. That was absurd, of course, since the murdered deputy had apparently come to the house expecting to talk to me, which meant that I certainly existed before I woke up down there, but in those dreams, I kept reliving that moment over and over. I would awaken, look around the basement and realize that it was some sort of laboratory, and then start up the stairs. That was as far as my dreams would go, though, and then I’d be waking up again.
I woke up for real when the lights in my cell suddenly got brighter. I could hear noises in the hallway, and suddenly there was a loud thunk as a slot in the door fell open. A food tray was passed through the slot, and I hurriedly took it and set it on the table. I looked back at the door, to see a cup being passed through, and took it as well. It was orange juice.
“You want coffee?” I heard, and I looked through the little window on the door to see a face looking back at me. I nodded, and a moment later, another cup was passed through. This one held coffee, and a hand gave me two packets of sugar to go with it. I carried these treasures over to the table, as well.
Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, a couple of small sausage patties, two slices of toast and a packet of jelly, the kind you find in restaurants. I suddenly realized that I was hungry, so I ate it all, barely managing to make the jelly spread across both slices of toast, and drank down the orange juice and the coffee. As far as I knew, I had never been in jail before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Who knew when I would get to eat again?
A little while later, somebody came by and collected the dishes. I sat at the table for a bit, wondering what else might happen that morning, but after a while, I got bored. I lay back down on the bunk and pulled the blanket over me, and was soon sleeping again.
I didn’t get to nap for long. A little while later, I heard a buzz, and my cell door popped open. I opened my eyes to see a jailer standing there.
“Sal Jones?” I knew that was the name the psychologist had given me when I was brought in, so I nodded. The jailer motioned for me to get up and come with him. “Come on, Sheriff wants to talk to you.”
I followed the jailer down the hall, and he escorted me into a small room with a steel table and four chairs. He told me to have a seat in one of the chairs, then walked out and locked the door behind him. I sat there for about five minutes, before I heard the door open again.
The sheriff walked in, the same man I had seen the night before, the one who’d brought me in. He sat down at the table across from me, and just looked at me for a long moment.
“I’m required by law to read you your rights,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney and want one, one will be appointed for you.” He went through several more rights that he said I had, and then asked me if I understood them. I said that I did, and he went straight into the questioning.
“Well, you ready to tell me what happened last night?”
I shrugged. “I wish I could,” I said. “I honestly have no idea.”
The sheriff sighed, and shook his head. “Are we really going to play this game? We’ve got you dead to rights, you know that, don’t you? I saw you kneeling over Kyle, your hands on his throat, his blood all over the place and all over you. There’s not a jury in the world anywhere that would believe anything other than that you murdered him, and claiming you don’t remember is only going to make them feel like you’re trying to play them. That’ll piss them off, and they’ll convict you just out of spite. There’s no way in the world you’re going to get out of this, so you might as well just tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth, and your psychologist has already said so,” I said. “The very first thing I remember is waking up down in the basement of that house, and that wasn’t more than ten minutes before you got there. I hurried up the stairs, realized the house was on fire, ran into a bedroom and put clothes on, and was headed out the door when I tripped over that man. That was the first I knew that he was there, and he was already bleeding then. I stopped to try to help him, and he tried to say something, but nothing would come out. I was trying to put pressure on the wound and stop the bleeding, but he died. That is literally all I know.”
The
sheriff slammed his fist down on the table. “Oh, knock off the bullshit!” he said. “Just tell me what the hell really happened last night, would you?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled into his face. “I don’t have a single clue, I swear! My name is Sal, and that’s all I know!”
I continued to try to explain that to the sheriff, but he didn’t want to listen. Every time I said I couldn’t remember, he got angrier, and it was clear that his anger was building up. Sooner or later, I knew he was going to explode. But I simply couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, because I didn’t know the answers.
“You can keep this crap up as long as you want, buddy,” the sheriff said, “but we both know it’s not going to do you any good. No one’s going to believe that you suddenly, conveniently, got this amnesia and can’t remember what happened when a deputy sheriff was murdered in your living room. I mean, come on, think about it. Doesn’t that seem a little far-fetched, even to you?”
“Oh, I understand exactly what you’re saying,” I said. “Believe me, Sheriff, I wish I could give you the answers you want. Do I think a jury is going to believe I don’t remember? Probably not, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the truth.”
There was a knock on the door, and the sheriff called out for whoever it was to come in. A deputy stepped inside and said, “Sheriff? There’s a guy here from the FBI, wants to talk to you about Kyle’s murder.”
“FBI? Tell him—shit, tell him I’ll be right there,” the sheriff said. He turned back to me, and it hit me that he looked terribly upset all of a sudden. “Well, it seems like you’re about to get a lot more attention than you wanted. FBI gets involved, sometimes, when a cop gets killed.” He got up and walked out the door, and I heard him tell the deputy to keep an eye on me until he got back.
He was only gone for about five minutes, and when he came back, he had another man with him. The two of them came in and sat down, and the sheriff spoke. There was a controlled anger in his voice, and I could tell he wasn’t a bit happy about having this person with him.
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 2