Diminished Capacity Read online

  “Our friend Kevin can tell Goodman is an idiot,” Emory reported. “But he’s still afraid of getting charged with murder, so I think we’ll be okay despite that.”

  Brunelle sighed again. “There’s gonna be a suppression motion about this. I just know it.”

  “Sounds like a you problem,” Emory replied, but with a grin.

  Brunelle nodded. She was right. But before he could worry about the possible suppression of Kevin’s version of events, Goodman had to actually extract it.

  “Come on, Kevin,” Goodman was saying. “You’re the one who called us. You’ve already given me his name. Just tell me what he did. I mean, I know what he did. I saw the old man. But I don’t know why. I don’t know what led up to it. Now’s your chance to help your friend.”

  “Really?” Brunelle hissed. “Help him? Don’t help him. Hang him.”

  “Shh,” Emory scolded. “He’s about to tell us what happened.”

  “In a way that helps his friend,” Brunelle pointed out. “That means it doesn’t help me.”

  “I thought you prosecutor types only cared about the truth,” Emory teased.

  “Not ‘only’,” Brunelle replied. “We care about winning too.”

  Emory suppressed a chuckle, then nudged Brunelle with her elbow. “Pay attention,” she chided, with a nod toward the interrogation.

  “So, look, there’s something you need to know about Justin,” Kevin was saying. “He’s a good guy, a really good guy, but he’s got a temper, you know? Not like all the time. He’s not one of those guys who’s always kinda mad. But when he gets mad, man, he gets really mad. Like crazy mad. I’ve seen it, and I’ll tell you, man, it’s scary. But I’ve never seen him go off like he did tonight.”

  “What happened tonight?” Goodman encouraged.

  “Well, we came over to Seattle to just hang out, you know? Bellevue can be pretty boring, so sometimes we come over here to see what’s going on.”

  “So, you guys are from Bellevue?” Goodman asked, raising another not subtle eyebrow toward the increasingly obvious two-way mirror.

  “Yeah, we grew up there,” Kevin explained. “Been friends since middle school. I live in Kirkland now. Bellevue is crazy expensive. But Justin lives in one of the high-rise condos downtown. His parents are loaded.”

  “Yeah, you gotta be rich to live in Bellevue,” Goodman agreed.

  “Not everyone in Bellevue is rich,” Emory protested to Brunelle.

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Do you live there?”

  “No,” Emory admitted after a moment. “I can’t afford it.”

  “Anyway,” Kevin continued, “we went to one of the bars down by the stadiums, and we were walking up Fourth Ave toward downtown. We were thinking about maybe finding something to eat, maybe in Chinatown or Pioneer Square, I don’t know.”

  “Sure, sure,” Goodman interjected just enough to encourage Kevin to keep talking. “So, then what?”

  “Well, we got up near the train station, and we saw this old homeless guy up ahead. He looked all dirty and scraggly, man, and he was pulling one of those like mini-suitcase cart things old people take to the grocery store, you know?”

  Goodman nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen those.”

  “Right, one of those,” Kevin said. “And it was all old and wobbly and stuff. And so, Justin, he was like, ‘Hey look at that guy, man,’ and then he yelled, ‘Get a job!’ at him.”

  Kevin smiled at the memory, as if he still thought it was funny. Then the smile faded.

  “But the old dude, he didn’t just ignore us, right? No, he looks over at us and yells, ‘Fuck you, you pussy!’ Just like that, with his gnarly teeth and his dirty old beard. ‘Fuck you, you pussy!’”

  “Seems like an appropriate response,” Goodman shared his opinion. Probably not helpful to the interrogation, but honest. Brunelle couldn’t disagree.

  But Kevin was a little surprised. “Yeah, well, I don’t know about that. I mean, whatever, just ignore us, right? But no, he just turns and yells, ‘Fuck you, you pussy!’ right at Justin. And Justin? Oh man, I could see it in his eyes. He lost it. And I knew what was coming. Well, I thought I did…”

  “What was coming?” Goodman prompted. “What did Justin do?”

  “He stops walking and yells back at the guy, ‘What did you say to me?’ And I figure the old dude is gonna keep his head down and get gone, but he just says it again. ‘Fuck you, pussy!’ And then he shuffles up onto the sidewalk like he’s just gonna walk away.”

  “But you guys didn’t let him just walk away,” Goodman knew. “Did you?”

  “Well, I mean, Justin didn’t.” Kevin was quick to distance himself from what was about to happen. “He starts walking real fast at the guy, right? And he’s yelling, ‘What did you say to me? What did you say to me?’ And the old dude, he sees him coming, so then he starts walking fast too. And his cart thing tips over, but he looks back at Justin again and just leaves it there. He starts walking even faster because Justin, he’s a big dude, man, and he’s coming.”

  Kevin nodded to himself at the memory, his eyes widening even as he looked down at the floor to continue his story. “So, the old dude, he ducks down this staircase, right? The stairs down to that place where you catch the train, you know?”

  “The platform,” Goodman provided the term.

  “Right, that,” Kevin said. “And Justin, he takes off running. And he’s still like, ‘What did you say to me, old man?’ and ‘Get back here!’ And he catches the old guy at the bottom of the stairs. He grabs him by the shirt and starts just shaking him. And the old guy, man, there’s nothing he can do about it, right?”

  “Right,” Goodman acknowledged.

  “And I figure Justin’s just gonna scare him, right? Make him apologize. Make him cry. Maybe make him shit himself. But no, man. He just hauls off and punches the guy square in the face, right? And I mean, I heard the guy’s nose break. It was like this loud, wet crack.”

  “That is what that sounds like,” Brunelle agreed from behind the glass.

  “Yep,” Emory agreed, without looking away from the interrogation.

  “And I’m just like, holy shit,” Kevin continued, “What just happened?”

  “Assault Two just happened,” Brunelle answered.

  “Maybe even Assault One,” Emory suggested. “Depending on the injuries. And his intent.”

  Brunelle nodded. That was true.

  “So, I think we’re done, right?” Kevin went on. “But no, wrong. Justin punches him again. And again. Like four times. And each time it just sounds worse than the last time. Like there’s nothing left to break. And Justin, he’s got blood all over his fist, and it’s sprayed on his face and his shirt and shit. He looks fucking crazy, man. Then he throws the dude down on the cement. And dude doesn’t even try to break his fall. His head just bounces off the cement, man. But Justin doesn’t stop. He starts kicking him. And now I know dude’s unconscious because he’s not even trying to cover up. But Justin’s still yelling at him, even though he’s unconscious. He’s still like, ‘What did you say to me?’ and ‘Who’s a pussy now?’”

  “Big man,” Goodman commented, again probably unhelpfully, but honestly. “Then what? How did the old guy end up on the tracks?”

  “Justin kept kicking him,” Kevin answered. “And it was moving him toward the edge of the thing.”

  “The platform,” Goodman said.

  “Yeah, the edge of the platform,” Kevin confirmed. “And then he just pushed him off with his foot, down onto the tracks. And I’m thinking, shit, what if he gets hit by a train?”

  “Manslaughter One,” Brunelle answered.

  “Felony Murder,” Emory said. “Predicate felony is the assault.”

  She was right. Brunelle was really starting to like her.

  “But no,” Kevin continued, “Justin jumps down onto the tracks too. And I run over to the edge and I’m like, ‘Justin, dude, stop. We gotta go. We gotta get out of here.’ But he just ignores me
. He grabs the old dude and pulls him over to the tracks, right? He puts his head right on the metal rail. Then he just starts stomping on it.”

  Kevin frowned at the memory and took a sharp breath. “I looked away, man, but I could hear the stomping. And I could hear Justin still yelling at him. ‘Who’s the pussy now, old man? Who’s the pussy now?’ And then, I heard…. Oh man, then I heard…” But he trailed off.

  “What did you hear, Kevin?” Goodman prompted him, even though everyone on both sides of the mirror knew what he heard.

  Kevin shook his head again, fighting against having to recount the memory. “I heard his skull crack, man. I heard it break. And it was like loud and muffled at the same time. Not like when his nose broke. That was sharp. This was dull. A dull, thud, crack noise. I almost fucking puked, man. And Justin, I think he said something. Like, one last thing. But I didn’t hear it. I was just like, fuck, man, he just killed that dude. I started to have a panic attack. And then Justin climbed back up onto the platform, and he looked at me, and he was like, ‘Did you see that, man? I stomped that motherfucker’s skull in.’”

  “Shit,” Goodman said.

  “Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “So I was just like, ‘Yeah, man. Yeah, you sure did.’ Even though I’d really looked away. But I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what he might do. Like I said, I’ve seen him get angry before. I’ve seen him explode and lose it before. We’ve been friends since fifth grade. But man, I’ve never seen him like that before. And there was nobody else around and for the first time ever since I first met him, I was afraid of him. Like, genuinely afraid of him. And he’s just standing there right in front of me, covered in blood, and he’s just like, ‘Did you see that?’”

  “So, what did you do?” Goodman asked.

  “I just tried, like, self-preservation, man,” Kevin answered. “I was like, ‘Come on, man. We need to get out of here. You need to get out of here. We should split up.’ And shit like that. And at first, he didn’t really seem to get what I was saying, but then he started to realize he could get in some serious trouble for that shit.”

  “Minimum twenty years,” Brunelle knew.

  “Life in prison,” Emory suggested, “if we can find an aggravator.”

  Yep. He really liked her.

  “So, we go back up to the street level, you know,” Kevin explained. “And I was like, ‘you go that way, and I’ll go this way,’ and like, ‘don’t tell anybody what happened.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And he looks down at his clothes, and he starts to realize he’s got all this blood on him. And he’s got this weird look in his eyes, like he just woke up and he doesn’t know what’s going on. And he starts heading south, back toward the stadiums. So I head north, man, toward downtown. And that was the last time I saw him.”

  Goodman nodded. He had what he needed for the crime, but he still wanted the whole story. “So what did you do next?”

  “I went to the first bar I could find and I had a fucking drink, man,” Kevin said earnestly. “And then I had another drink. And then I called you guys.” His expression suddenly turned concerned. “I called in time, right? I’m not gonna get in trouble, right?”

  Goodman sighed and shrugged. “That’s up to the D.A.,” he said, looking fully at the two-way mirror, in case there was any doubt left that the interrogation was being watched.

  “Oh, man,” Kevin moaned. “The prosecutor was watching this whole time?”

  “Afraid so,” Goodman said. He stood up and opened the door to the hallway. “Did you get a last known address for our suspect?” he asked the patrol officer standing there, as if he’d known all along someone would look up the information for him. Then again, he was right..

  “Yes, sir,” the officer replied. “It’s in Bellevue.”

  Just like Kevin said.

  “Good.” Goodman turned to the mirror. “Detective Emory, you think we could get an agency assist to pick up the perp?”

  “Detective?” Kevin ran his hands over his head. “Another detective was watching too?”

  “A Bellevue detective, Kevin,” Goodman clarified. “We’re so many steps ahead of you and your buddy Justin, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  Brunelle rolled his eyes. There was nothing wrong with showing a little bravado, but he didn’t need Kevin to be scared to death. He just needed him to be more scared of prison than he was of Justin Pollard. Which meant they needed to get Pollard in custody ASAP.

  “Come on,” Emory grabbed Brunelle’s arm. “We better talk to him, both of us, before Goodman ruins it.”

  Emory stepped into the interrogation room, Brunelle in tow, and immediately took charge. She pointed at the patrol officer with the paper in hand. “Give me the address.”

  The officer handed it to her.

  “Jefferson Towers Condominiums.” Emory recognized the address. “That’s right downtown.”

  She pointed next to Goodman. “I’ll call out our tactical unit. They’ll be at the main entrance to the building in fifteen minutes. You grab whoever you want present for the arrest and meet us there.”

  Goodman nodded in acknowledgement.

  Then she pointed to Kevin Langford. “And you. This man here,” she jerked her thumb back toward Brunelle without even looking at him. “He’s the prosecutor who was watching you through that mirror. He’s the one who decides whether you walk out of here, or go join your buddy in a jail cell. If you’re smart, you’ll do whatever he wants.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kevin nodded. He looked over at Brunelle. “What do you want me to do, sir?”

  “Don’t worry, Kevin. It’s easy.” Brunelle assured him. “I want you to tell the truth.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Jefferson Towers Condominiums were located in the heart of downtown Bellevue, only blocks from the Bellevue Arts Museum, the city’s European-style Downtown Park, and Bellevue Square Mall, the cornerstone of the city’s upscale retail district. The first floor of the condo tower was filled with the trendiest new shops and restaurants. The top floor was the penthouse, owned by someone so hyper-rich that people like Brunelle and Emory had never even heard of them. The dozens of stories in between were filled with high-skilled tech workers (a Bellevue staple), high-end sex workers (also a Bellevue staple), and at least one homicidal trust-fund kid.

  Removing a high-risk suspect from a house was a lot easier than removing one from a high-rise condo. For one thing, the house could be surrounded. For another, there weren’t innocent neighbors on either side of a single sheet of drywall. And perhaps most importantly, there were multiple points of entry. Primary officers could keep a suspect busy near the front door while secondary officers entered from the rear. But there was only one point of access to Pollard’s condo, and it was a door that opened onto a long, narrow hallway with no natural cover. If they did a knock-and-announce, they would be sitting ducks while Pollard decided whether to open the door, or open fire through it.

  So, Brunelle did his own agency assist. He couldn’t go in with the tactical unit. Lawyers don’t kick down doors, handcuff murderers, and seize evidence. But they do get the warrants necessary for the cops to do all that without having to knock first. Brunelle used the drive over to contact the on-call judge and get two warrants signed by the time Emory pulled to a stop in front of the Jefferson Towers. The arrest warrant would let them kick the door in before Pollard knew what was happening, and the search warrant would let them seize whatever evidence he was likely in the middle of destroying when they did.

  Then Brunelle waited across the street while Emory, Goodman, and a team of heavily armed and armored police officers entered the lobby. Less than ten minutes later, the same team exited the lobby with Justin Pollard in handcuffs. He was secured in a patrol car, and Emory sauntered over to Brunelle with that swagger cops got when they did a cuff-and-stuff on the bad guy.

  “We got him,” she announced. “No shots fired. That’s the Bellevue way.”

  “Good job,” Brunelle congratulated her. �
��Now what?”

  “Now we drive three blocks to Bellevue P.D.’s headquarters at City Hall,” Emory explained. “We’ve got interrogation rooms too. And we use a video feed, so you can watch from another room without having to stand at a mirror like you’re in a 1950s cop show. You want to watch, right?”

  In the past, under different circumstances, with a different companion, Brunelle might have made a sexual innuendo about ‘wanting to watch.’ But instead, he just nodded. “Damn right I do.”

  “Good,” Emory replied. She grabbed his arm again, but with more force than before. Adrenaline, Brunelle figured. “Let me show you how Detective Casey Emory conducts an interrogation.”

  CHAPTER 4

  When they arrived at Bellevue City Hall, two of the tactical officers took Pollard to the interrogation room while Emory led Brunelle to the observation room.

  “So, you gonna get him to confess?” Brunelle asked. It was a combination of challenge, hope, and request. A confession was always helpful.

  Emory grinned. “I can’t promise that,” she said. “But I am gonna get him angry.”

  Brunelle smiled back at her. That would be helpful too.

  She left him in the observation room and Brunelle looked around. There was no coffee, but there was a large viewing monitor, showing Justin Pollard—albeit at a weird angle from a camera hidden in the corner of the ceiling. He was sitting at a small table, one arm handcuffed to a metal bar on the wall. It didn’t look very comfortable, one arm slightly raised and off to the side, but Brunelle supposed that might be intentional. If he was cooperative, maybe they could uncuff him. On the other hand, maybe not. He was a big guy, with a recently documented record of homicidal rages. And Emory was planning on pissing him off.

  Brunelle watched Emory enter the observation room. Followed by Goodman. Brunelle sighed. Goodman had done well enough with Kevin Langford, but Langford had called them. He wanted to talk, in part because he was just a witness. Justin Pollard, the murder suspect, probably wasn’t as interested in telling the cops what had happened. In fact, if Pollard was smart, he’d lawyer up and not tell them a damned thing. That was why the most important job of the interrogator was to get the suspect to talk despite the facts that, one, they really shouldn’t talk, and two, the first thing you have to do is advise them of their Constitutional right not to talk, which was a pretty huge hint to shut the hell up. But most of them talked anyway.