The boy frowned, obviously at a loss, at his most vulnerable now, floundering, helpless. Trent had to alter their relationship, must now become the boy’s advocate.
“This is the position you’re in, Jason. You’re the prime suspect.”
“Wait a minute,” the boy said.
“Yes?”
“I came here because I was supposed to be helping you and the police. But that wasn’t true, was it?”
“Not entirely,” Trent admitted. “It would have been wonderful to have had your assistance or if you could have provided evidence that would point the finger of guilt elsewhere. That would have made us—me—very happy. But that didn’t happen, Jason. And we’re left with the only evidence at hand. The evidence that points to you as the killer of Alicia Bartlett.”
Before the boy could answer, Trent went on: “I know. I know. You claim that you are innocent. But you see, it’s only a claim. With nothing to support it. But let’s leave it all aside for a moment and think of what you should do. What strategy should be employed. I’m trying to help you here, Jason.”
“How can you help me?” Jason asked, bewildered, finding it hard to believe what he was asking.
“First of all, we can’t have any deception involved. We have to be straight and to the point. Keep it simple. . . . Are you Catholic, Jason?”
“We, my mother and father, and my sister, we go to church almost every Sunday.”
“Then you know about confession and absolution.”
“Yes. But I only went to confession once or twice. I haven’t gone for a while.”
“So you know how it all works. How first you confess and then are given absolution. You have to admit your sins before you can be forgiven.”
Jason nodded, wondering what being a Catholic and going to confession had to do with his situation here, his sudden predicament.
“Well, there is something you have to do before we can take steps to protect you.”
A dim warning sounded somewhere in Jason’s mind, his body, his spirit—he wasn’t sure which or where but was suddenly jolted thoroughly.
Confession. A different word from confess. He suddenly saw where this man was going. He wanted Jason to confess. To confess to killing Alicia Bartlett. Jason almost giggled in his disbelief, a reaction that was as unpremeditated and unexpected as a belch.
“You want me to say I killed Alicia Bartlett?”
Horror, disbelief in his voice.
“If you leave this room right now, this minute, without any admission, there’s no telling what’s waiting for you outside. Angry people can turn very ugly. It doesn’t take much to start a riot. . . .”
“Tell me what happens then if . . .” He could not bring himself to say the word. Would never say the word. Would never do what the word meant he would have to do.
“I will have your voice on record,” Trent said, indicating the recorder and the pulsing green light. “I’ll go out and run interference for you. Tell the authorities out there the mitigating circumstances. How you’re cooperating. Everything will be shown in the best possible light. . . . The atmosphere will be friendly, not hostile. No one will be looking to shut you up in prison for the rest of your life. You’ll receive consideration and understanding. Helping hands. It’s possible that you can go home today, be with your family. The charge can possibly be reduced. All kinds of good things can happen, in contrast to the worst scenario. Life in prison, away from your family, hated by people in town, your schoolmates. Once you make that admission, we can save you from all that.”
“But I can’t do that.”
“Let me emphasize the situation, Jason. Outside this door, there are officers waiting to charge you with the murder of Alicia Bartlett. Once you step outside, you will have no protection. Your age won’t save you. There’s a law now that allows a juvenile like yourself to be tried as an adult. Which means life in prison, without parole, or worse. And you’ll be looked upon as a murderer. Without any defenses. But there’s a way to mitigate that outcome.”
“What way?”
“By showing that you are not a cold-blooded murderer, by showing that you did not mean to harm Alicia, that you are sorry that it happened . . .”
“But I didn’t kill her.”
“I know, I know. Denial is part of the defense mechanism. Because you didn’t mean to do it translates in your mind to the belief that you didn’t do it. That’s entirely understandable, Jason. What you did in one blinding moment gets blotted out in your memory and you convince yourself that you didn’t do it.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You see? You’re still in denial. And that’s the worst thing that you can be at this moment. You must turn away from that denial. And then you’ll have a better chance . . .”
“What kind of better chance?”
“A better chance to minimize the case against you. Once you make the admission, then your defense can begin to work. Your side of the case can be presented in the best possible light. People will see your side of the story. They will see that you are really a good kid, deserve the best treatment. I can’t reiterate enough how terrible it can be otherwise. The town outside, your friends and neighbors ready to rise against you. But if we show them your sorrow, your remorse, then you can change things around.”
Tears were tiny pools in the corners of the boy’s eyes.
Trent, for the first time, found it hard to look into the eyes of a subject. He turned his own eyes to the door, as if his glance could cause it to swing open and allow for the entrance of Braxton to announce that the killer had been found, detained and arrested, and that Jason Dorrant was free to go. Which meant that Trent was also free to go, this responsibility lifted—more than that, this act of betrayal unnecessary. Betrayal. The act finally defined.
Turning from the thought, Trent directed his eyes to the boy and his attitude of innocence. But that attitude would not show up on tape. Only his words. He also knew that he would never get this boy to sign a confession, that even his confession on tape would probably not hold up later. But he was not concerned with that now. He had been sent into this office to make this boy confess. Today. That was his mission, and what he intended to do. Make this boy utter the words that Trent must have on tape.
“Listen,” he said to the boy.
The boy inclined his head, his eyes beseeching Trent, as if Trent held all the answers and the solution as well as the answers.
“Hear the silence, Jason? Out there in the hallway?”
“Yes.” A wisp of a voice.
“It’s a terrible kind of silence. It’s people waiting with bated breath to see who leaves this room. A cold-blooded monster who killed a child. Or a nice kid from a good family, who’s never been in trouble before, no police record, who’s human, makes mistakes like everyone else in the world. People will understand. They will be rooting for you. But you must act first, Jason. It’s all up to you.”
Trent could see the despair in the boy’s eyes, his body drooping with weariness, the trembling of his chin, the tears staining his cheeks. He sensed the imminent moment of success, felt the sweet thrill of triumph, everything else cast aside for the moment, all doubts gone. This was what he was hired to do, what he was born to do.
You are what you do.
Ah, Lottie. Ah, Sarah.
Five minutes later, the boy uttered the words Trent needed to hear.
As the machine whirred, recording the bruised and broken voice.
PART III
Symbolic, Trent thought when he saw the bug—black, swollen, glistening—crawling across his desk. He didn’t know what kind of bug it was and watched fascinated as it reached the transcript and lifted itself onto the cover, pausing to rest on the title: Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant.
Trent rolled a magazine into a weapon and prepared to dispatch the bug with one decisive blow. But it began to move again and Trent swept it off the desk with the magazine, watching it spin through the air, land upright and scurry away to a fa
r corner of the office.
He turned his attention to the transcript with its pebbled black cover, finding it irresistible as usual. Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant. He reached for it, opened it, thinking: one more time, the transcript impossible to ignore, like a scab to which your finger keeps returning.
He stared at the words on the page but derived no meaning from them, as if they were hieroglyphics, impossible to decipher.
Inevitably, he thought of the small office in Monument and the boy and, of course, Sarah Downes. And most of all he thought, against his will, of that scene in the hallway at police headquarters in Monument, moments after he had walked out of the small office, leaving behind the boy sitting stunned and silent in the chair, disbelief in his eyes.
Looking down the corridor, Trent had seen Sarah Downes emerging from an office at the far end. She spotted him at once, an eager smile appearing on her face. He closed the door behind him, leaving the boy alone to contemplate what he had done. He smiled at Sarah as she hurried toward him. He realized how beautiful she became when she abandoned her cool elegance.
Trent waited, audiocassette in hand, savoring the sweet moment. Her heels clicked on the warped old wooden floor. As she approached, she glanced at the cassette, her eyes lingering on it. Trent wondered if the office had been bugged, if she already knew about the boy’s confession, the boy’s voice captured forever on tape.
When she came to an abrupt stop before him, her lilac scent was diluted by a hint of perspiration, which somehow made her seem dearer. She frowned, her jaw tightening as she again looked at the cassette.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“Yes,” Trent said. “The boy confessed. It’s here on tape.” Suppressing his excitement. Surprising himself by the excitement he felt.
He offered her the cassette, as if it were a gift.
“That’s not possible,” she said, shaking her head.
“But it is.”
“You made him confess.” Not a question but a statement. Voice flat. More than flat, deadly, an accusation.
He didn’t answer, knew instantly something was wrong.
“They have the killer in custody,” she said. “I was coming to tell you that. The girl’s brother. His alibi with his friends broke down. One of them implicated him, then the other. He confessed.”
Trent looked down at the cassette in his hand.
At that moment, he heard the office door swing open behind him. Turned and looked, as did Sarah Downes. Saw the boy standing there, wan, abject, eyes haunted, flesh moist and sallow. He looked broken, as if just lifted down from the cross.
The telephone rang, bringing Trent back into the reality of his own office. He picked up the phone, heard the voice of Effie, the dispatcher.
“Still no answer, Trent,” she said, a bit impatient. “Want me to keep trying?” Her voice betrayed her unwillingness to do just that. “It’s been three days and now her machine doesn’t pick up. It’s apparently been turned off.”
Three days or thirty, Trent knew there would be no response. Sarah Downes would not be calling back. Neither would the senator.
His jaw began to ache, like an old enemy asserting its presence.
“Don’t forget your appointment with the chief,” Effie said, sudden sympathy in her voice.
She knew what awaited him at the meeting: a demotion not in rank but in everything else. Maybe the graveyard shift, midnight to eight. No more special privileges, no special time off for interrogations. There probably wouldn’t be any more calls for interrogations, anyway.
The transcript lay there, waiting for him as he hung up the telephone. Waiting for him to open it again. Trent Interview. Subject: Dorrant. Jason Dorrant. Poor kid, but at least he was young, free, not caught and fixed in time, as if frozen in amber. Like so many others. Like me.
You are what you do, Lottie had said.
But now I don’t do anything.
The nightmares stopped after a week or so and he wasn’t sure whether they really had been nightmares or just bad dreams. His father said nightmares were the kind where you dream that you’re awake and terrible things happen to you and there is no place to run to. Bad dreams were just that: dreams that were bad.
Jason’s dreams were bad but he never could remember them, just the feeling they brought back when he woke up, the feeling that someone or something was chasing him and somehow he couldn’t run, his legs were frozen or, if not frozen, trying to walk in deep water. But nothing specific. And even that word specific scared him.
But what really scared him was another feeling and this one was hard to describe, hard to even tell the doctor about, a feeling that he wasn’t really here in the world like other people, not able to connect, like he was out of context with the rest of the world, his house, his family.
Specific and context: words that terrified him because they brought back that small office and the man called Trent and what he said Jason did that he didn’t do.
But he didn’t want to think about that.
Didn’t want to think about that?
No, he didn’t want to think about that.
But knew he had to think about that.
What he did. No, not what he did but what he said he did when he did not do it.
Sometimes the pills helped, but he didn’t like to take them because they made a buzzing in his ears and didn’t take away that feeling that he wasn’t really here. Yes, of course he knew he was here, right here in the house or outside on the patio and next week at school but still not here, like nothing was real and he knew it wasn’t a dream.
He did not like to be alone. He didn’t like it when nobody was around. Like now in the house, his father at work and his mother at the Y and Emma off somewhere. Sure you’ll be all right, Jason? his mother had asked, with that worried look on her face, the one expression she wore all the time these days. Sure, fine, he had said, because he didn’t want her to worry, didn’t want anybody to worry, he was the one who had done the terrible thing and he wanted to carry the guilt of what he did all by himself.
But I didn’t do anything.
Yes, I did.
But he could never do what he said he did, what Mr. Trent got him to say.
But how did Mr. Trent get him to say what he did when he didn’t do it? Could never do it, could never do something like that. Never.
Never?
But if you said you did it, maybe you could do it, maybe you could do something terrible like that. Maybe deep inside in that secret place of yours you really knew that you could do it.
But how could I do it?
Not how but why.
Okay, how and why would I do it, then?
Look, you already said you could do it, that you did it to little Alicia, when you could never do anything like that to her. But what about someone you could do it to?
Like who?
Like, oh, maybe Bobo Kelton.
Yes, Bobo Kelton.
See, you already said you could do something like that so why not really do it then, show them that you could do it, that what you said in that room was right, really, and not wrong?
Show them all that you weren’t wrong after all.
But how could I do a thing like that?
He wished his mother would come back. Or Emma. His father couldn’t because he was at work. Hot in the house. But he resisted thinking about the heat. A few days ago, he had opened all the windows in the house, not because it was hot but because he felt like he was suffocating even though some windows were open. He didn’t want to run out of the house, didn’t want to go out in the street, and instead he had run around throwing open all the windows, even in the attic and down in the cellar, even though some of the cellar windows were all dirty and cobwebby. And it wasn’t until later when his mother got home that he realized it was pouring outside and the wind was blowing and all the windows were opened and the rain was coming in.
So he ignored the heat now and wondered about what he should do
next. If he was going to show what he could do and really did it this time instead of saying he did when he didn’t, he remembered that Bobo Kelton hung around the Rec Center a lot, every day, showing off as usual, laughing and sly, as usual.
Jason looked at the clock. Ten minutes before three. Hot afternoon. He knew that Bobo would be at the Center. All he had to do was go there and wait. Across the street.
A beautiful feeling of sweetness came over him. He lifted his head, let the feeling carry him for a while, like a fresh breeze in his heart.
Then he went into the kitchen and took the butcher knife out of the drawer.
About the Author
Robert Cormier’s acclaimed novels for young adults have been translated into many languages and have consistently appeared on the Best Books for Young Adults lists of the American Library Association, The New York Times and School Library Journal. In 1991 he won the Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring a lifetime contribution to writing for teens, for The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese and After the First Death. His most recent novel for Delacorte Press was Frenchtown Summer, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction.
Other books by Robert Cormier
After the First Death
Beyond the Chocolate War
The Bumblebee Flies Anyway
The Chocolate War
Eight Plus One
Fade
Frenchtown Summer
Heroes
I Am the Cheese
I Have Words to Spend
In the Middle of the Night
A Little Raw on Monday Mornings
Now and at the Hour
Other Bells for Us to Ring
Take Me Where the Good Times Are
Tenderness
Tunes for Bears to Dance To
We All Fall Down
Published by
Delacorte Press
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036