he’d been in the system himself more than once, whether serving an overnight contempt sentence after pissing off some judge, or something equally silly, like getting caught snooping around in the chief clerk’s office in order to get a peek at the judicial courtroom assignment sheet for the following month, so he could engage in a little judge-shopping.
“So,” he said, “how about telling me what happened.”
“Where would you like me to start?” Jeremy asked in a voice so soft Jaywalker had to lean forward to hear it.
“I’d like you to start at the beginning. And take your time. I need details.”
Jeremy took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said.
“I’ve got all day,” Jaywalker told him.
“I guess it started,” Jeremy said, “when I met this girl.”
No shock there. Jaywalker had learned long ago that most murders were about money or drugs. But if they weren’t, they were about girls. “What was her name?” he asked.
“Miranda. Her name was Miranda.”
“And?”
“We, we became friends.”
“Friends?” Jaywalker asked. “Or lovers, too?”
“No. We never got a chance.”
“How did it go?” Jaywalker asked him. “The friendship.”
“It went good, at first.”
“And then?”
Already Jaywalker could see that getting information out of Jeremy was going to be a slow and painful process. Over time, he’d come to liken it to dental extraction. Not only did Jeremy speak in something between a whisper and a murmur, he summarized. A summary can be helpful if you want to get from the beginning of a story to the end of it in a hurry. On the other hand, if you’re interested in finding out what really happened and why, a summary is the opposite of what you’re looking for. Again Jaywalker told Jeremy to take his time, that it was detail he was after. But if Jeremy understood the word, he was for some reason unable to follow the direction.
“There was a problem,” he said.
“What kind of a problem?”
“There were these guys,” said Jeremy. “Seven or eight guys, actually, and one girl. One of the guys, the main one, kept going like Miranda belonged to him, even though she didn’t. And they gave me a hard time because of that. You know.”
“No, I don’t. How did they give you a hard time?”
“They followed me. They called me names. They told me they were going to get me. That kinda stuff. You know.”
“And?”
“And finally I had a face-off with one of them.”
“A face-off?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it,” said Jaywalker. His therapist used to say that, back when Jaywalker had gone into treatment following his wife’s death, because he couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, couldn’t even remember why he was supposed to. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” “How does it make you feel?” “What do you think about it?” The therapy hadn’t lasted too long. But bit by bit, Jaywalker had begun sleeping at night again, and getting out of bed in the morning, and life had somehow gone on. So who was to say? Maybe the therapy had helped. Maybe the same sort of dumb-assed questions might work with Jeremy.
“We had a fight, him and me.”
“A fight. With weapons?”
“No,” said Jeremy. “With fists.”
“Who won?”
A shrug. “I did, I guess.”
“Then what?”
“He pulled a gun,” said Jeremy. “We fought over it. It went off. I got it away from him.”
“And then?”
“And then I shot it at him.”
“Once?” Jaywalker asked him. “Or more than once?”
“More than once.”
“How many times?”
Jeremy shrugged again. “I’m not sure,” he said.
“But you killed him?”
Jeremy’s answer was so soft Jaywalker couldn’t hear it and had to say, “What?”
“I guess so.”
“Shot him between the eyes?”
“If that’s what they say.”
“That’s what they say,” said Jaywalker.
“Then I guess it must be true.”
“Why did you shoot him between the eyes?”
Jeremy seemed to think about that for a minute. Or maybe he was honestly trying to remember. Squinting through the wire mesh of the partition that separated them, it was hard for Jaywalker to tell.
“Self-defense?” But the way Jeremy said the words, they came out sounding more like a question than an answer or a recollection. No doubt he knew nothing about the nuances of justification, the body of law that allows one to use force—occasionally even deadly force—to protect one’s self or someone else. But despite his ignorance, it was pretty obvious that even Jeremy knew it wasn’t going to be much of a fit to the events he’d described.
Jaywalker figured it was as good a time as any to start finding out. “Was the guy armed at the moment you fired that shot?” he asked. “The one that hit him between the eyes?”
“No,” said Jeremy. “Not then he wasn’t.”
“Was he coming at you?”
“No.”
“Threatening you in any way?”
“No.”
“What was he doing?”
Jeremy closed his eyes. Maybe he was trying to picture things as they’d happened that day, seven months ago. Maybe he was even trying to relive the incident, seeing if he somehow couldn’t make it come out differently this time. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and, looking directly at Jaywalker, said, “I don’t really remember.”
So much for self-defense.
They talked for a while more before Jeremy asked what time it was. And even though Jaywalker told
