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CHAPTER 27
THE JUMBLE OF DRAB boxes that constituted KPD headquarters possessed just
enough windows to highlight how blank and unbroken most of the walls were. The
biggest expanse of glass was the entryway, which doubled as a corridor
connecting the police department with the municipal traffic court. Outside, a
mix of cops and traffic scofflaws smoked as equals.
I took a right inside the lobby and presented myself to the desk sergeant
under glass. He nodded in recognition at my name, then buzzed someone to
escort me upstairs. My escort proved to be a short detective with the build
and the personality of a fireplug. Though I d never seen a fireplug with a
half-chewed toothpick dangling from what would be its face. If fireplugs had
faces. Fireplug s name was Horace Bingham, a name I thought particularly
unfortunate particularly since he pronounced it horse though I had the good
manners not to call Horace s attention to the gracelessness of either his name
or his enunciation.
Horace showed me into a cinder-block room outfitted with a table, three metal
folding chairs, and a video camera high in one corner, then closed the door.
Twenty minutes crept past.
The beep of my cellphone made me jump. It was Art.
How are you? Where are you?
Funny you should ask. I m in an interview room on the fourth floor of KPD,
waiting for Detective Sergeant John Evers.
Evers is working this?
Yeah. Maybe with the help of this fireplug-looking little guy.
Oh, you mean Horse?
Yeah. Horse.
Well, Evers is good. Best thing I can say about Horse is that he hangs back
and lets Evers do most of the work. They got any leads that you know of?
They haven t said. I m gonna suggest a couple. Just then the door opened and
Evers walked in, accompanied by Horace. Listen, they re here to talk to me. I
gotta go.
Hang in there. Call me later.
Thanks, Art. As I folded the phone shut, I said, Art Bohanan. He had good
things to say about both of you.
Evers nodded and smiled briefly. Sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Brockton.
We ve been fielding a lot of media calls, as you might expect. Not much to say
at this point; we try to limit what goes out, especially in the early stages
of an investigation, but you still gotta give em a couple sound bites, or
they get snippy.
I hope you didn t release Dr. Carter s name? She s got an ex-husband that I
know of; she might have other family, too, that ought to be notified first.
We notified the ex-husband yesterday. He said he d deliver the news
personally to her mother. We had to release her name we can t keep that under
wraps once the next of kin have been notified. Beyond that, though, I just
told them her death appeared to be a homicide, and that she was found at the
Body Farm.
Did you tell them I was the one who found her?
No. I just said one of the research staff had called 911 to report finding
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the body. They saw you walk out the gate, though; they all knew it was you. I
told them half a dozen times, in half a dozen ways, that I couldn t comment on
who made the report, or who the victim was, or how they d been killed, or who
might have committed the crime.
Speaking of who might have committed it, I said, can I mention a couple of
names that have occurred to me?
Sure, he said. But first, I need to start things off officially. We record
every interview, both on that video camera up there he pointed behind him at
the camera near the ceiling and on an audiocassette recorder. He pulled a
small silver recorder out of his shirt pocket, pressed the RECORD button, and
laid it on the table between us. I m also going to advise you of your
rights.
You re reading me my rights? Do you suspect me?
No, sir. And yes, sir. We do this with every single person we interview. I
mean, at this stage, everybody s a suspect to some degree; our minds are
completely open, and we re going to consider every possibility. And we ll read
everybody their rights, just in case somebody unexpectedly blurts out a
confession. If we haven t already advised them of their rights, we might not
be able to use that confession in court. Does that make sense?
I suppose so. Still feels strange, though.
First he leaned down toward the tape recorder and said, This is an interview
with Dr. Bill Brockton regarding the death of Dr. Jessamine Carter. He added
the date and the time the interview began, and then he read my rights off a
laminated card he pulled from his wallet.
Evers asked me to recount yesterday morning s events again, in more detail, so
I did. After he seemed satisfied with the amount of detail he had, he let me
tell him about the threats Jess had received on her voice mail. And when was
this?
I had to think about that. Last Thursday, I said. No, Wednesday. Same day
as that protest at UT. She was on the news that night, and she called me
Thursday morning to tell me she d gotten the calls the night before.
Did you actually hear these messages? Or did she just tell you about them?
She just told me about them. She called me from Chattanooga that night.
How specifically did she describe them?
Not very. She said some were graphic sexual threats, and some were pretty
sick death threats. But she didn t give the particulars, and I didn t want to
ask her to repeat them. Would you all still be able to get hold of those
messages?
Maybe. If she didn t erase them. We can certainly check with the phone
company to see if her voice mail was part of her telephone service. If not,
we ll look for an answering machine at her house. Do you know whether she
reported these threats to the phone company or the police?
I don t think so. I encouraged her to, but she didn t seem as worried by them
as I was. She said she got crank calls and threats all the time. He nodded
and made a note.
Next I related how Mrs. Willis had assaulted Jess in my office on Friday,
after Jess had released her son s identity to the news media and had described
his murder in a way that angered Mrs. Willis. How brutal was this attack?
asked Evers.
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