Read Online A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger - Free Book Online

Carol Bell, in other words, was not a chapter of Smith’s life that he would want the police to know about. Smith did, however, mention that there was another tenant in the building, a woman named Blackstone.
    â€œYou are a male, aren’t you, Roy?” Cahalane asked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre you a male—sex?”
    â€œI’m a male.”
    â€œYou don’t use sanitary napkins, do you?”
    Smith addressed the other officers: “I don’t know what he’s talking about now.”
    â€œDo you wear women’s clothes?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWho do the women’s clothes belong to?”
    â€œBlackstone. What about her clothes?”
    Smith was refusing to admit to the murder, but neither could the police catch him in a significant lie. Much of a police interrogation consists of asking otherwise meaningless details about a suspect’s day that he can’t possibly keep track of. Once the police have opened up even a small contradiction in the testimony, they have a way into the web of lies that inevitably surrounds any denial of guilt. In the eyes of the police Smith was so obviously guilty that his refusal to make everyone’s life easier by confessing seemed to exasperate them. They were playing their parts, in a sense, but Smith was not playing his. Again it was Lieutenant Cahalane who attempted to break through the denials.
    â€œStraighten me out, will you? I’m all mixed up.”
    â€œGo ahead,” said Smith. Cahalane proceeded to introduce himself and everyone else in the room, including the stenographer. He then led Smith once again through every detail of his morning. He asked what time Smith woke up, what he ate for breakfast, where he got off the bus. With slow, grinding thoroughness he asked exactly what work Smith performed in the Goldberg house, which rooms he worked in, and how long everything took. He asked what door heentered through, what door he left through, and whom he saw on the short walk to the bus station. At one point Cahalane asked if he saw three children walking along the sidewalk on Pleasant Street—Dougie Dreyer and his friends coming home from school—and Smith said that he did. The children all placed Smith leaving the crime scene, and Smith would have known that, but he still declined to fall into the trap of lying. Cahalane was getting nowhere.
    â€œDo you ever black out?” Cahalane finally asked.
    â€œI never blacked out in my life.”
    â€œDo you ever find yourself getting into some sort of predicament that you don’t remember getting into?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou know at all times everything you’re doing?”
    â€œSure, yes—I mean I’m normal, if that’s what you mean.”
    â€œYou have never been in any mental hospital?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHave you ever fainted in the street?”
    â€œNever.”
    Cahalane was trying to lure Smith into a legal trap. If he killed Bessie Goldberg but didn’t remember doing it, then it could not possibly be premeditated. The definition of first-degree murder is the killing of another human being “with malice aforethought,” and a blackout would effectively remove intentionality from the crime, reducing the charge to manslaughter. Had Smith taken the bait and acknowledged that perhaps he had killed her without realizing it, he almost certainly would have been destroyed at trial, but that was not Cahalane’s problem.
    â€œThis was a pretty nice lady?”
    â€œShe was nice.”
    â€œShe treated you nice?”
    â€œReal nice.”
    â€œDid you proposition her?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œDid you ask her to be over-friendly?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œListen, Roy, no one is trying to put you in the middle, we’re just trying to find out what happened.”
    â€œLook, this is serious; I’m giving it to you straight,” said Smith. “If you’ll excuse