And even though I couldn’t see past the glare on the windshield, I knew who was behind the wheel.
When he pulled alongside me, his window was already rolled down, because he already knew what he was going to do. He gestured at me to let me know he wanted me to pull over, but I was so close to the bridge over the river. I floored the pedal; opened my old Impala all the way up. And I lurched out ahead of him. I was going so fast that I was wrestling the steering wheel just to keep the car going straight. It felt like any crack or bump in the road would set me spinning or flip my Chevy.
But the Dodge was so much more car than I was driving, and he pulled even with me again. And then he looked right at me, and he waved. He took his hand off the steering wheel doing a hundred and thirty miles per hour so he could wave at me, so he could let me know that all my efforts were futile, that Mississippi might as well be the moon as far as my hopes of ever getting there were concerned, and that I was living my last free moments. And then he had a gun in his hand, and he opened fire on me.
Have you ever been shot, Carlos?
WATKINS: No, Chester, I haven’t. Why would you ask me that?
MARCH: I don’t mean no offense by it. You’ll have to excuse my manners. They’ve suffered a bit, on account of my situation here. Of course that’s a strange thing to ask in polite society. I just forget that sometimes, because most of the folks I run into have caught one at one point or another, whether they’re white or black or purple polka-dotted or whatever. Even the guards here are rough-living types, or they wouldn’t be working in this godforsaken hellhole. And there have been wars going. A lot of people have been shot.
WATKINS: I went to Dartmouth, and I work for NPR. So, no, I have never been shot.
MARCH: All right then, let me tell you what it’s like. You’d think it would hurt, but it doesn’t. Not exactly—at least not at first. Your nerves don’t know how to register that kind of trauma. You know how it hurts worse to stub your toe than it does if you cut yourself real bad with a sharp knife?
WATKINS: Yeah, that’s more within my range of experience.
MARCH: Well, getting shot feels like getting punched by somebody wearing a boxing glove; you don’t realize, right away, what has happened or how bad the damage is. Especially since adrenaline dulls the pain response. When you injure yourself a little bit, your body gives you a shock so you’ll stop doing whatever dumb thing you’re doing, but if you’re hurt real bad, your body doesn’t want to do anything that will keep you from trying to fight back or run away. It works that way because of evolution, or something.
I didn’t even really think I’d been hit at first. Schatz fired three times, and I knew one had busted the windshield and one had hit the door. And I felt a pressure in the middle of my left biceps, but it didn’t really hurt, so I didn’t realize I had been shot until I noticed that my arm didn’t work. I couldn’t keep the car straight at that speed with just one hand, and I lost control of it.
WATKINS: He could have killed you.
MARCH: He was trying to kill me, or, leastaways, he didn’t care whether I lived or died as long as I didn’t get away. I wanted to sue him or open a personnel complaint or something over him shooting at me like that, but every lawyer I talked to said he was within his rights.
I lost control of the car, but I had the presence of mind to turn the wheel into the spin and pop the handbrake, or I probably would have died. The median was sort of a grassy ditch, and the car skidded in the dirt and then rolled over once. The windows shattered, and I was showered with broken glass, and the dash caved in some, so the steering wheel hit me pretty hard. I crawled out of the wreck just in time to see Schatz running at me. The way he moved was still sort of clumpy, but he was somehow pretty quick on his feet. He mule kicked me right in the stomach, and that took the wind out of me and knocked me flat on the ground.
WATKINS: What happened to your cousin Lee?
MARCH: He was in the trunk. I think he was pretty lucky. The front end of the car took most of the damage. He got banged around a little bit in there. Broke his arm and cracked a few ribs. But he recovered.
I’m not saying what I did to my cousin was right. If he were still around, I’d apologize. But my actions have to be looked at in context, you know? In the context of family history. In the context of my unfair situation. And, anyway, if I’d been convicted of kidnapping or robbery or corpse desecration or any of the stuff I did—the stuff I was forced to do by my circumstances—I would have been released long ago. I would not have been convicted of murder without the confession, and I would not have confessed if I hadn’t been tortured. The reason I am still in prison, still in solitary, and facing execution is what Buck Schatz did to me in that interrogation room.
23
Chester sat in a steel chair, in front of a steel table, in a windowless interrogation room. In the middle of the table, there was a large crystal ashtray with five or six spent butts in it. That wasn’t supposed to be in here, but the last detective who had used the room must have left it. I wanted a cigarette so badly that the smell of the ashtray made me want to climb the goddamn walls.
Chester was shivering, even though the room wasn’t cold. He was pretty messed up. I’d let the paramedics look him over and bandage the gunshot wound to his arm, but he needed a doctor to tape his cracked ribs and sew up the bullet hole. I wanted to question him first, though, while the events were still fresh and his emotions were still running high. I figured he probably wouldn’t die as a result of a couple hours’ delay in getting medical treatment, and if he did, well, that would be a real shame, and we’d all feel really bad about it.
Department policy by the mid-’70s was to have two detectives in the room whenever a suspect was being questioned. That way, the detectives could corroborate each other if the suspect tried to deny giving his statement at trial, or if he tried to claim he’d been mistreated. The second detective in the room with me and Chester was a guy named Morris Bentley. Bentley was in many ways my opposite: a tall, blond-haired patrician WASP with a gentle disposition.
Bentley wasn’t somebody I’d want stepping on my toes during an investigation, but I had taken to calling on him when it was time to question a suspect, because we played off each other well in an interrogation room. I sometimes struggled to build rapport with criminals, particularly the ones I had beat up or shot while I was trying to arrest them. When he was in the room, I could snarl and bellow and stomp around, and the suspect would come to rely on Bentley to keep my rage in check, and Bentley could exploit that trust to extract a statement. Bentley, meanwhile, wasn’t great at physical intimidation. He didn’t like to get his hands dirty, and the suspects sensed that and perceived it as weakness. If Bentley had a suspect who needed to be slammed against the wall a few times, I could do that for him.
One example of how this worked: I’d wanted to keep Chester’s arms shackled behind his back, which would have been extremely painful during his interrogation, but Bentley had prevailed on me to shackle them in front of him, so he could sign his Miranda waiver. I had to admit, that made sense.
But Bentley could be threatening as well. His face was the face of the system, and he could take on a cold, regal demeanor that reminded suspects that they were at the mercy of people who looked like him and would decide their fates without much empathy or compassion. The threat he posed was less immediate, but perhaps more chilling. Being in a room with him reminded suspects that they could be thrown away and forgotten.
The way we divided up the responsibilities was: He was the good cop when we were interrogating white suspects, who viewed him as a comforting authority figure who could keep the hotheaded, ethnic attack dog on its leash. I was the good cop when we were interrogating black suspects, who perceived me as a bleeding-heart Jew who might protect them from Bentley’s dispassionate judgment. With Chester March, I was obviously the bad cop, and Bentley was a perfect good cop.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Bentley told Chester. “An
ything you say will be used against you. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights?”
“Yes,” said Chester.
“If you would like to speak to an attorney, you can just let us know, and this conversation will end. But as soon as you do that, Detective Schatz is going to go write up the paperwork to charge you with capital murder.”
“And you’re welcome to go ahead and ask for your lawyer,” I said. “We have you dead to rights. We found the bloody fireplace poker you beat Evelyn Duhrer to death with buried in the backyard. We recovered your fingerprints from the murder weapon. The neighbor, John Clifton, saw you entering the house several days after he could smell the stink of the dissolving body from the street. He has identified you from a photo lineup, and he accurately described your car. Your cousin Lee is also ready to talk about how you kidnapped him and tried to take his money. I am ready to ship you off to death row, and I don’t need to hear another goddamn word from you.”
The Supreme Court had ruled that we had to inform a suspect of his constitutional rights before interrogating him, but outside of the court-mandated warning, we were not obligated to tell him the truth about anything. In fact, we had not recovered any fingerprints from the fireplace poker. John Clifton, who was not a keen observer, had failed to pick Chester’s face out of a photo lineup of white men, despite Chester’s distinctive broken nose. And I had not yet interviewed Lee; he was expected to recover, but he was under sedation at the hospital. Lee was an actual person, unlike Chester, who was a ball of shit with eyes and false teeth. So Lee’s medical needs took priority over my investigation.
That meant we actually did need Chester’s statement. If he lawyered up without talking, the district attorney would look at our evidence and offer him a plea deal for murder two, which carried fifteen years to life with parole eligibility after ten. That wasn’t good enough. For what he’d done, Chester needed to ride the lightning.
“Detective Schatz,” Chester said, “have you been waiting here for me since last we met?”
He smiled at me. His teeth were flawless, undamaged in the accident. The porcelain implants were harder than bone. I figured I could probably find something that would break them if I really tried, though. Maybe a wrench.
“I should have shot you twenty years ago,” I said.
“Well, you shot me today.”
“I should have shot you in the head. Your daddy’s gone, and your money’s gone, and the only family you have left are your cousins, and I don’t reckon they’re too fond of you at the moment. There’s nobody left in the world who likes you, Chester. Anything could happen to you, and nobody would care.”
Bentley put a firm hand on my shoulder. “Take a step back, Detective Schatz. That’s not an appropriate way to talk to a suspect.”
Chester smirked at me, and despite his busted face and the adverse dermatological effects of twenty years of being a vile, murderous scumbag, I saw him as he had been when I first encountered him sitting on his porch sipping his rum drink in his white summer suit. He thought he was going to do it again. He thought he was going to kill a woman in my town and get away with it. I gripped the edge of the table with white knuckles to keep myself from reaching for my nightstick.
“Can I get some coffee or something?” Chester asked Bentley.
“Of course,” Bentley said. “Buck, why don’t you fetch Mr. March some coffee.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
“Mr. March has asked for some coffee. We would like to engage him in civil discourse. There’s no reason we can’t be civil, is there, Buck?”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, as I stomped out of the room.
This exchange was rehearsed; every interrogation of this type had to involve a moment where Bentley could demonstrate authority over me to the suspect, so the suspect would seek to ingratiate himself to Bentley in order to get protection from me. The truth was, I was senior to Bentley, and I was at a stage of my career where nobody really told me what to do anymore. But even though I knew this was all just routine interrogation schtick, it enraged me to be dressed down in front of Chester. I felt like I was back in that cramped office in 1955, smelling Henry McCloskey’s shit breath and thinking I was about to be fired or worse by a couple of Klanned-up hillbillies who were universally considered to be my social betters.
I walked down the hall to the coffee pot, poured two cups of black coffee, and returned to the interrogation room. I slammed one of the cups in front of Chester, spilling a little bit, and gave the other to Bentley. I didn’t want coffee. I wanted a cigarette, and the smell of the butts in the ashtray was driving me nuts. I crammed two sticks of Juicy Fruit into my mouth and started grinding them between my teeth.
“I think, if you can make a show of contrition—a demonstration of humanity, really—I can persuade the district attorney not to seek the death penalty. What we really need to know is where Margery March’s body is,” Bentley said.
Chester flashed his fake teeth. “How should I know that?” he asked.
Bentley leaned forward and spoke softly. “You’re already facing capital murder for killing Evelyn Duhrer. You are drowning. I am trying to throw you a life preserver. I just need you to prove to me that you’re not totally irredeemable.”
I started laughing. “Fat chance of that.”
“Shut up, Buck,” Bentley said. He turned back to Chester. “Her family has been grieving for twenty years. All they want is to be able to inter their daughter’s remains in the family plot in Nashville. If you can help them do that, if you can make that showing of genuine remorse, maybe I can go to the prosecutor and get you a lighter charge.”
There was a long pause, while the killer seemed to consider his deeds and the opportunity he had to show remorse or contrition. And then Chester started laughing. “This has been really great, watching you guys put on this little show,” he said. “I certainly believe that the two of you don’t like each other. I don’t blame you. You guys are a couple of assholes. I don’t like you, either.”
“Goddamnit,” I said, and I grabbed the heavy crystal ashtray off the table and threw it at Chester. Because of his gunshot wound and the fact that his hands were shackled, he couldn’t raise his arms fast enough to protect his head. The corner of the ashtray hit him right in the middle of the forehead. I had expected it to shatter against his skull, but it didn’t even break when it hit the floor. Chester fell face forward, banged his head a second time against the side of the steel table, and then slid over the side of his chair.
“Jesus, Buck,” Bentley said. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “A pratfall maybe? Is that the right word for it? It feels right. I think that was a pratfall.”
“Is he dead? Did you just kill him?”
I bent over and looked under the table at Chester. “Naw, he’s breathing. I think he’s probably fine.”
“This man needs medical attention,” Bentley said.
I grabbed Chester under the arms and hauled him up into his chair. “No. He needs to confess. The best thing for him is to unburden his soul. This man does not leave this room until he gives us a statement.”
Bentley yanked his tie loose and unbuttoned his collar. “My God, Buck. I’ve never seen a man take a blow to the head and then just shut off like that.”
Chester’s face was twitching a little bit.
“I think he’s coming around,” I said. I smacked Chester lightly on the cheek. “Wake up, Shitbird.”
Chester’s eyelids fluttered. “What happened? Where—Where am I?”
“What did you do with your wife, Margery, Chester?” I asked.
He looked at me, without recognition, and he said, “Out on Dad’s property. There’s a stand of trees along the edge of the cotton fields. I buried her there.”
“Wait a second,” Bentley said.
“Are you going to make this a probl
em?” I asked.
“No, we just need to get the waiver. Chester March, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights?”
“I guess so,” Chester said. The pupil of his left eye was huge and dilated. The pupil of his right was a pinprick. His upper lip twitched.
Bentley had the Miranda waiver form. He slid it across the table to Chester. “You just need to sign this,” he said.
Chester reached for the pen and seemed surprised to find his wrists shackled. “What is this? What’s going on?” he said.
I uncuffed his wrists and put the pen in his hand. He signed the form in a tremulous, spidery script.
“Now, let’s start from the beginning. Why did you kill Cecilia Tompkins, the black prostitute?”
TRANSCRIPT: AMERICAN JUSTICE
CARLOS WATKINS (NARRATION): If you’re going to appreciate just how profoundly Detective Schatz is alleged to have violated Chester’s rights, first you need to understand what those rights are, so I asked Ed Heffernan to help explain.
PROFESSOR EDWARD HEFFERNAN: So, you want to know about the rights of the accused? I bet you and your listeners know what they are already. You know what they say, every time they arrest somebody on Law and Order?
WATKINS: You’ve got a right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you.
HEFFERNAN: That’s it. Do you know the rest of it?
WATKINS: You’ve got a right to an attorney. Um … If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you?
HEFFERNAN: Yep. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees a right against self-incrimination. It’s there to prevent people from being forced to confess to crimes and then having those coerced confessions used as evidence at trial. And the Sixth Amendment guarantees a right to counsel, to keep the accused from getting railroaded. The right against self-incrimination isn’t much good if police can rake people over the coals until they get a statement out of them, so any time an arrestee asks for a lawyer, police have to stop questioning him until he’s had a chance to consult counsel. In 1966, the Supreme Court held in Miranda v. Arizona that accused individuals must be informed of their rights before they can be questioned. That case is why the police have to give you that warning. Not that it does a whole lot of good.
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