Read Online Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller) by Joel Goldman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joel Goldman
Ads: Link
of that trap.
Jared had confessed to murder, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being set up to take the fall for crimes he didn’t commit. He wouldn’t be the first person to confess to something he didn’t do after being questioned throughout the night by an aggressive cop like Rossi.
And his confession didn’t match all the charges. For starters, Jared hadn’t confessed to the rape. If he was willing to admit murdering the victim, why deny raping her? That there was evidence of forcible rape didn’t mean Jared was the rapist. It was possible that the victim had been raped, or engaged in rough sex, before she had sex with Jared, neither of which Alex could rule out, given what little she knew about the victim.
But that wasn’t all. According to Rossi, Jared said that he and the victim argued after they had sex and that’s when he strangled her. If Jared had raped her, that sounded more like second-degree murder, knowingly causing the death of another during the commission of a crime, than first-degree murder, knowingly causing the death of a person after deliberation on the matter. If convicted of second-degree murder, he’d have a shot at parole one day.
And if the sex was consensual, Alex might even be able to convince the jury that it was involuntary manslaughter—recklessly causing the death of another. That was a Class D felony, which carried a maximum sentence of four years.
It was a short walk from her office to the county jail. The building was officially known as the Jackson County Regional Detention Center, a name that politicians liked better. Everyone else called it what it was—the jail, all seven floors of it.
The jail population was segregated by floor. Those with serious mental health problems and openly gay and transsexual inmates were housed on the second floor, an arrangement that made Alex want to scream whenever she set foot on the floor. Instead, she continually lobbied the county to stop equating the two.
The third floor was for inmates who had no prior incarcerations, resulting in a population of mostly young inmates. Jared fit that profile. The crimes he was charged with didn’t. Rape and murder qualified him for the seventh floor, home to sex offenders and high-profile inmates.
Alex rode the elevator past the fourth and fifth floors, which were reserved for inmates who had served real time in state or federal prisons, and past the sixth floor, which housed women. She stepped off on seven, looking through a windowed wall into another room, where the corrections officers, or COs, worked. On the far wall of that room, there was another bank of windows, through which she could see the inmates. Having little else to do, they gathered at those windows to see who had come to visit.
At any one time, she might have half a dozen clients in the jail. Once they saw her, they would point at themselves, miming their question. “Are you here to see me?” She’d smile and mouth her apology, pointing at the chosen one. She’d called ahead, letting the COs know whom she wanted to see.
She scanned the faces lined up against the windows, shaking her head at the familiar ones, wondering which of the others was Jared Bell, her answer coming when a skinny white man with vacant eyes and mangy hair peeled away from the windows and shuffled toward a waiting CO.
Another CO escorted her to an interior meeting room big enough to accommodate a scarred metal table bolted to the floor and a pair of chairs. Jared entered through another door, chin down and hands jammed in the pockets of his jumpsuit, eyes darting around the room like a mouse looking for a morsel or a way out.
“Hi, Jared. I’m your lawyer, Alex Stone. Please take a seat.”
He slid down in his chair until his legs were stretched beneath the table almost to Alex’s side.
“Okay,” he said, after a moment.
“Are they treating you all right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Nobody’s given me any trouble.”
He was pleasant,
Jared had confessed to murder, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being set up to take the fall for crimes he didn’t commit. He wouldn’t be the first person to confess to something he didn’t do after being questioned throughout the night by an aggressive cop like Rossi.
And his confession didn’t match all the charges. For starters, Jared hadn’t confessed to the rape. If he was willing to admit murdering the victim, why deny raping her? That there was evidence of forcible rape didn’t mean Jared was the rapist. It was possible that the victim had been raped, or engaged in rough sex, before she had sex with Jared, neither of which Alex could rule out, given what little she knew about the victim.
But that wasn’t all. According to Rossi, Jared said that he and the victim argued after they had sex and that’s when he strangled her. If Jared had raped her, that sounded more like second-degree murder, knowingly causing the death of another during the commission of a crime, than first-degree murder, knowingly causing the death of a person after deliberation on the matter. If convicted of second-degree murder, he’d have a shot at parole one day.
And if the sex was consensual, Alex might even be able to convince the jury that it was involuntary manslaughter—recklessly causing the death of another. That was a Class D felony, which carried a maximum sentence of four years.
It was a short walk from her office to the county jail. The building was officially known as the Jackson County Regional Detention Center, a name that politicians liked better. Everyone else called it what it was—the jail, all seven floors of it.
The jail population was segregated by floor. Those with serious mental health problems and openly gay and transsexual inmates were housed on the second floor, an arrangement that made Alex want to scream whenever she set foot on the floor. Instead, she continually lobbied the county to stop equating the two.
The third floor was for inmates who had no prior incarcerations, resulting in a population of mostly young inmates. Jared fit that profile. The crimes he was charged with didn’t. Rape and murder qualified him for the seventh floor, home to sex offenders and high-profile inmates.
Alex rode the elevator past the fourth and fifth floors, which were reserved for inmates who had served real time in state or federal prisons, and past the sixth floor, which housed women. She stepped off on seven, looking through a windowed wall into another room, where the corrections officers, or COs, worked. On the far wall of that room, there was another bank of windows, through which she could see the inmates. Having little else to do, they gathered at those windows to see who had come to visit.
At any one time, she might have half a dozen clients in the jail. Once they saw her, they would point at themselves, miming their question. “Are you here to see me?” She’d smile and mouth her apology, pointing at the chosen one. She’d called ahead, letting the COs know whom she wanted to see.
She scanned the faces lined up against the windows, shaking her head at the familiar ones, wondering which of the others was Jared Bell, her answer coming when a skinny white man with vacant eyes and mangy hair peeled away from the windows and shuffled toward a waiting CO.
Another CO escorted her to an interior meeting room big enough to accommodate a scarred metal table bolted to the floor and a pair of chairs. Jared entered through another door, chin down and hands jammed in the pockets of his jumpsuit, eyes darting around the room like a mouse looking for a morsel or a way out.
“Hi, Jared. I’m your lawyer, Alex Stone. Please take a seat.”
He slid down in his chair until his legs were stretched beneath the table almost to Alex’s side.
“Okay,” he said, after a moment.
“Are they treating you all right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Nobody’s given me any trouble.”
He was pleasant,
Similar Books
