She tossed her Coke into the garbage as she headed toward the interrogation room. “Looking forward to that.”
Jeffrey opened the door for her and watched Lena transform into the cop he knew she could be. Her gait was heavy, like she had brass balls hanging between her legs. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Cole Connolly without a word, legs parted, her chair a few feet back from the table. She rested her arm along the back of the empty chair beside her.
She said, “Hey.”
Cole’s eyes flashed to Jeffrey, then back to Lena. “Hey.”
She reached into her back pocket, took out her notebook and slapped it on the table. “I’m detective Lena Adams. This is Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. Could you give us your full name?”
“Cletus Lester Connolly, ma’am.” There was a pen and a few pieces of paper in front of him alongside a well-worn Bible. Connolly straightened the papers as Jeffrey leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was at least sixty-five if he was a day, but Connolly was still a fastidious man, his white T-shirt crisp and clean, sharp creases ironed into his jeans. His time in the fields had kept his body trim, his chest well developed, his biceps bulging from his sleeves. Wiry white hair jutted up all over his body, sticking out from the collar of his T-shirt, sprouting from his ears, carpeting his arms. He was pretty much covered in it on every place but for his bald head.
Lena asked, “Why do they call you Cole?”
“That was my father’s name,” he explained, his eyes wandering back to Jeffrey. “Got tired of being beat up for being named Cletus. Lester’s not much better, so I took my daddy’s name when I was fifteen.”
Jeffrey thought that at the very least this explained why the man hadn’t come up on any computer checks. There was no doubt that he had been in the system for a while, though. He had that alertness about him that came from being in prison. He was always on guard, always looking for his escape.
“What happened to your hand?” Lena asked, and Jeffrey noticed that there was a thin, one-inch cut on the back of Connolly’s right index finger. It wasn’t anything significant- certainly not a fingernail scratch or defensive wound. It looked more like the kind of injury that happened when you were working with your hands and stopped paying attention for a split second.
“Working in the fields,” Connolly admitted, looking at the cut. “Guess I should put a Band-Aid on it.”
Lena asked, “How long were you in the service?”
He seemed surprised, but she indicated the tattoo on his arm. Jeffrey recognized it as a military insignia, but he wasn’t sure which branch. He also recognized the crude tattoo below it as of the prison variety. At some point, Connolly had pricked his skin with a needle, using the ink from a ballpoint pen to stain the words “Jesus Saves” indelibly into his flesh.
“I was in twelve years before they kicked me out,” Connolly answered. Then, as if he knew where this was going, he added, “They told me I could either go into treatment or get booted.” He smacked his palms together, a plane leaving the ground. “Dishonorable discharge.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“Sure was,” he agreed, placing his hand on the Bible. Jeffrey doubted this meant the man was going to tell the truth, but it painted a pretty picture. Cole obviously knew how to answer a question without giving away too much. He was a textbook study in evasion, maintaining eye contact, keeping his shoulders back and adding in a non sequitur to the equation. “But not as hard as living life on the outside.”
Lena gave him a little rope. “How’s that?”
He kept his hand on the Bible as he explained, “I got banged up for boosting a car when I was seventeen. Judge told me I could go into the army or go to jail. I went right from my mama’s tit to Uncle Sam’s, excuse the language.” He had a sparkle in his eye as he said this. It took a few minutes for a man to let down his guard with Lena, then he started to treat her as one of the boys. Right before their eyes, Cole Connolly had turned into a helpful old man, eager to answer their questions- at least the ones he deemed safe.
Connolly continued, “I didn’t know how to fend for myself in the real world. Once I got out, I met up with some buddies who thought it’d be easy to rip off the local convenience store.”
Jeffrey wished he had a dollar for every man on death row who had gotten his start robbing convenience stores.
“One of ’em ratted us out before we got there- cut a deal for a reduction on a drug charge. I was cuffed before I even walked through the front door.” Connolly laughed, a sparkle in his eyes. If he regretted being ratted out, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of bitterness left in him. “Prison was great, just like being in the army. Three squares a day, people telling me when to eat, when to sleep, when to take a crap. Got so when parole came around, I didn’t want to leave it.”
“You served your full term?”
“That’s right,” he said, his chest puffing out. “Ticked off the judge with my attitude. Had me quite a temper once I was inside and the guards didn’t like that, either.”
“I don’t imagine they did.”
“Had my fair share of those”-he indicated Jeffrey’s bruised eye, probably more to let him know he was aware that the other man was in the room.
“You fight a lot inside?”
“About as much as you’d expect,” he admitted. He was watching Lena carefully, sizing her up. Jeffrey knew she was aware of this, just like he knew that Cole Connolly was going to be a very difficult interview.
“So,” she said, “you found Jesus inside? Funny how he hangs around prisons like that.”
Connolly visibly struggled with her words, his fists clenching, his upper body tightening into a solid brick wall. Her tone had been just right, and Jeffrey got a fleeting glimpse of the man from the field, the man who didn’t tolerate weakness.
Lena pressed a little more gently. “Jail gives a man a lot of time to think about himself.”
Connolly gave a tight nod, coiled like a snake ready to strike. For her part, Lena was still casually laid back in the chair, her arm hanging over the back. Jeffrey saw under the table that she had moved her other hand closer to her weapon, and he knew that she had sensed the danger as well as he had.
She kept her tone light, though, trying some of Connolly’s own rhetoric. “Being in prison is a trying time for a man. It can either make you strong or make you weak.”
“True enough.”
“Some men succumb to it. There’s a lot of drugs inside.”
“Yes, ma’am. Easier to get ’em there than it is on the outside.”
“Lots of time to sit around getting stoned.”
His jaw was still tight. Jeffrey wondered if she had pushed him too far, but knew better than to interfere.
“I did my share of drugs.” Connolly spoke in a clipped tone. “I’ve never denied it. Evil things. They get inside you, make you do things you shouldn’t. You have to be strong to fight it.” He looked up at Lena, his passion replacing his anger as quickly as oil displaces water. “I was a weak man, but I saw the light. I prayed to the Lord for salvation and He reached down and held out His hand.” He held up his own hand as if in illustration. “I took it and I said, ‘Yes, Lord. Help me rise up. Help me be born again.’ ”
“That’s quite a transformation,” she pointed out. “What made you decide to change your ways?”
“My last year there, Thomas started making the rounds. He is the Lord’s conduit. Working through him, the Lord showed me a better way.”
Lena clarified, “This is Lev’s father?”
“He was part of the prison outreach program,” Connolly explained. “Us old cons, we liked to keep things quiet. You go to church, you attend the Bible meetings, you’re less likely to find yourself in a position where your temper might be sparked by some young gun looking to make a name for himself.” He laughed at the situation, returning to the genial old man he had been before his outburst. “Never thought I’d end up being one of those Bible-toters myself. There are folks who are either for Jesus or against him, and I took against him. The wages of my sin would have surely been a horrible, lonely death.”