Free Death's Shadow by Jon Wells Page B

Hamilton, Place checked Carl into a cell just before 11:30 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. Place interviewed him. He asked about that night with Jackie McLean. Carl said they had sex in unit 4 above the Sandbar, but that he did not harm her; he said that they had both left the unit and returned downstairs to another where people had been smoking crack.
    “Here’s the problem we have,” Place said. “She’s killed in the apartment ... the one you’re in with her. That’s where she’s found dead.” Place told him about the high vaginal swab, indicating Carl’s DNA on the victim.
    “I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t explain it,” Carl said. “I’m not going to change what I said; I can’t explain it.”
    Place showed Carl a photo of the metal bar, the murder weapon.
    “That’s the weapon that was used to cave in her head.”
    “Okay.”
    “And there’s no question as to the finding, that you’re responsible for her death.… Did you kill Jackie?”
    “No.”
    “What happened in there?”
    “I told you.”
    “Yeah, but it wasn’t the truth.”
    “As I know it to be.”
    Place moved on to ask him about the murders for which he had not yet been charged, of Charlisa and Pat.
    “Can we just take a break a bit?” Carl replied. “This is all just nuts.”
    Place left for a moment. Alone in the room, Carl looked up at the video camera.
    “This is crazy,” he said to himself, then swore several times. “How did I get caught up in this?”
    When Place returned, Carl said he didn’t want to talk anymore, not without his lawyer.
    “Is there any reason,” Place continued, “that your fingerprints would be found in [Charlisa’s] apartment?”
    “I don’t know. I know people that used to live there.... So we are done with the questions now. Okay?”
    “Charlisa?” Place said. “Does that name sound familiar?”
    “Not really.”
    “She goes by Char. And her boyfriend was Pat.”
    “No, I don’t know them.”
    “Is there any reason your palm print would be on a bat in that apartment?”
    “No, unless it was Paul’s.” Paul was a former tenant of that apartment, and a friend of Carl’s.
    “Would it surprise you to know the prints were there?”
    “Yeah, a little bit. Maybe when I was there and sold pot ... I don’t, I can’t see it. You guys are way out in left field.”
    Carl asked if Place was charging him with the double murder.
    “Should I?” Place asked.
    “Go ahead.”
    “Did you kill them?”
    “No. No, I don’t even … no. That’s crazy. No. I never killed anybody.”
    “Should I believe you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why should I?”
    “Because I’m telling you straight.”
    Place told him that an informant had said Carl confessed to a double murder.
    “If you say so, but that’s unbelievable,” Carl said.
    “How would someone be in a position to pass that on to us?”
    “I don’t know…. I think it sounds like a pipe dream. You guys are way off base.”
    “How do you think everything’s going to turn out, when all is said and done with?”
    “I’m not worried…. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
    After two hours of questioning, Place left. Carl looked up at the camera again. “A pipe dream,” he said, shaking his head, cursing.
    Warren Korol, who had been watching the interview on a monitor in another room, entered. “I know you think this is a pipe dream, Carl,” Korol said. “But you know, there is somebody out there, you admitted to them that you killed two people. I’m going to find that person.”
    “Okay, but that’s inaccurate. I never did it.”
    “It’s no pipe dream, Carl.”
    Carl had been pressured by Place, but now there was something about Korol’s coolly aggressive manner that bothered him. Korol stared at Carl as though he knew what made him tick, like he was trying to bore a hole through his eyes and out the back of his skull. Carl did not like it.
    “Carl,” Korol said, “you need some help, bud.”
    “I need help,” Carl said,