Chapter Six
Leo
You never get used to living in a concrete box. I paced the tiny, claustrophobic space day after day, month after month, year after year, never more than a few inches away from the metal shelf prison officials told me was a bed.
Under that bed, my scheduled execution date had been added to the box of legal papers. No man should know the exact time and date they’ll die. I could count my remaining time in this world by the second, it’s as if a giant timer had started in my head the second I’d been told and I was helpless to watch it tick down. It was there when I paced. When I tried to read it’s ticking grew louder, when I slept it seemed to speed up, crying out I wasting my final days on sleep.
This was it. Hope had evaded me. I’d never walk in the free world again, never set a toe in the ocean, experience the sand under my feet. My body would never rest in a bed, my arms would never hug a loved one. I couldn’t remember the last person who’d held me, no matter how hard I tried, the memory escaped me. Had it been Maia? My mother? I prayed it’d been Maia. Her tiny fingers hooking around my neck whispering tales of her day into my ear. She’d throw herself into my arms every time I collected her from school. I’d grab her in my arms, swing her around, her face lighting up, streams of carefree giggles falling from her lips.
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is admit out loud that my hands had snuffed the life from her small, innocent body. I’d take life in this concrete tomb over repeating those words again. My mother swore at me when I’d told her I’d confessed. Six years, she’s been a pillar of strength, never letting me see her cry, even when they read the sentence out in court, condemning me to death, not a single tear fell from her eyes.
I watched helplessly as she faded in front of my eyes, her body thinning, her hair greying, her eyes dulled more with every visit. She never once questioned me, never showed any sorrow, but it was there, etched into her face. It all changed with that confession. She cussed, she cried, hysterical, agonised wails tore from her mouth, refusing to believe what I said. No-one believed it. Laura told me I was a fool, but she supported my choice to end it, to give up the fight. She wouldn’t turn her back on me, she wouldn’t accept my guilt, but she’d be there, to the end.
I sank to the bed, the thin mattress did little to protect me from the cold, hard metal beneath it. The clock in my head ticked off another second.
The slot in my heavy, iron cell door squealed open.
“Roman, you got a visitor.”
My mother wasn’t due today. Carly couldn’t face me, not in here. We spoke on the phone, but she couldn't face seeing me in chains. Laura cancelled her visit. I figured it must be Theo, my brother. He liked to surprise me. I’d guessed someone would come, they never let a visit pass. My friends, family, the women I’d met through Laura’s work, they all banded together to make sure every visit was filled.
I took to my knees in front of the thick door that trapped me in this box, leaning forward, my arms stuck through the slot behind me. Cuffs snapped closed around my wrists, you grew used to them, but they never got any less painful or humiliating. I had to stay that way, on my knees, my back to the door as it slid open. Two guards, armed with batons, tasers and pepper spray, fastened a belt around my waist, securing my wrists to it. My legs were shackled, those too, chained to my waist. The metal clinked as I shuffled to the visitation area, another box.
That’s my life. I was caged, boxed. Never free. Never with company. The guards escorted me there in silence. Silence filled most of my life now, I spent twenty-two hours a day alone in a concrete box. When I wasn’t alone in the box, I was alone in an outdoor cage or alone in a metal shower box, the metal door had holes in so we didn’t suffocate. Even at visitation, I was alone in a box, my visitors shielded from me by three-inch thick plexiglass, forced to speak to me through a plastic phone. My mother would see me for the final time in that box, not permitted to hold her son one last time. The next time she laid a hand on me, I’d be dead, cold on a slab in a funeral home.
The guards opened the gate to the visitation box. Dani, her face drawn, her olive skin dull, pale, her partner by her side, sat outside the box. They each reached for their plastic phone as I shuffled towards the metal stool in the middle of my box. I tried to stifle the giggle as the morbid thought hit me.
“What’s funny?” Dani frowned.
“Nothing.”
I’d just realised, I’d be buried in a box too, to spend all of eternity, boxed underground. I’d die in a box, a bigger one than I’d grown used to, but the execution chamber was still a sealed box. People in a different box would pump poison into my veins, the life would drain from me. My body would be transported to the funeral home in a box, where I’d be prepared for burial, placed in my coffin, my final box. That’s when I decided to ask my mother for cremation. I’d ask for my ashes to be scattered in Mexico, on the beach where Dani had given her virginity to me. Maia had loved it there when I took her once, declared it to be her favourite place in the world. I liked to imagine her spirit there, jumping the waves, hand in hand with Stacey, pleading with me to join them as they had in life.
“I took your brother’s visit, I’m sorry,” Dani told me.
“It’s fine. Theo wasn’t supposed to see me today anyway, his visit is next week, Lau… the person supposed to come today had to cancel, things came up.”
“Laura?”
My heart stopped.
“How do you know Laura?”
“I spoke to her yesterday. I asked her to cancel her visit, I needed to see you.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Dani had asked me if I was a monster, I’d given her the answer I knew she needed to hear, the one that would make this easier for her to bear. She had to believe it was true.
“I read your confession too.”
My stomach lurched, I couldn't breathe, that's not what I'd wanted, I'd guessed she would but prayed she wouldn't. The thought of her reading the sickening details they'd asked me for; Who died first, who did you rape first, why did you do it? They'd made me say it out loud, recording every word. The words I raped Maia fell from my mouth, their taste vile and bitter. No-one should read that.
"Oh." It's all I could say.
"Tell me, tell me here and now what you did and why."
"Why?"
"I need you to."
Fuck. Not again. Bile rose in my throat, I gazed down at my white jumpsuit, the chains around my ankles, the floor, anywhere but Dani’s face. The words poured from my mouth, each one as sickening and bitter as the last time I spoke them out loud.
“Leo…” Dani interrupted.
I kept speaking, kept my eyes on the floor. If I stopped speaking, I’d never find the strength to start again.
“LEO!”
Keep talking, Leo, just keep talking. Don’t stop. Give her what she needs.
“LEO, please!”
My heart was racing when I looked up at her. Her lips pursed, her face had paled even more. Schilling narrowed his eyes at me, stroking his thick hand over his chin.
“Look at me, Leo. Tell me to my face what you did.”
No. Don’t make me repeat those terrible things again.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Dani asked.
“No.”
“What did she smell like, the first time you abused her?”
What? They’d never asked me that during my confession.
“I don’t remember.”
“Think, Leo. This is something you’d remember. You’d remember every detail, it would be burned into your brain. I worked serious crimes before homicide, people like you remember things like that.”
Schilling’s eyes drilled into my, he studied every inch of my face, searching my eyes, waiting for my answer. Dani sat, passive, by his side, her gaze expectant.
“Cheerios, she smelled of Cheerios. Stacey used to give her them for supper.”
It’s the first thing that came into my head. Dani sighed, shaking her head. Schilling reeled, the mother fucker who’d fingered me for this first place, actually reeled, pushing back on his stool, the colour draining from his cheeks, his eyes wide in horror. He’d seen them, witnessed first hand the horrors inflicted on their tiny, helpless bodies, but hearing me remember what she smelled of disgusted him. I disgusted him.
“It’s not easier you know, believing the man you’ve loved for ten years is a monster?” Dani whispered, “It’s not easier than thinking he’s being executed for a crime he didn’t commit. I’ve spent the last two months laid awake at night, wondering if I did something, said something, if it was my kidnapping that turned you into this. God only knows how your mother is coping. If you think you’re saving us, you’re wrong.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say? I told them everything during my interview.”
“I want you to tell me about Stacey and the women you were helping in the weeks leading up to the murders.”
For the rest of the hour she drilled me relentlessly, question after question about Stace, about the girls I saw on the weekend, the stripper I’d been visiting the night of the slayings.
“That’s everything, for now, Leo, thank you.”
My whole body exhaled, shrinking with relief. It was over. I’d made it through.
“Who were you sleeping with?” Schilling asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Before the murders? You weren’t hiring the working girls, who were you sleeping with?”
“Why?”
“Answer the question,” Dani sighed.
“A woman I met through work, she was the daughter of one of the big bosses, used to hang around the site, flirting with the construction workers. We had a friends with benefits type set-up. It was nothing, really.”
The guard tapped on the door to my box. We had five minutes left.
“I was in Chicago when you looked for me. They moved me because someone was asking about me.”
My heart shattered. She’d been so close. If I’d only looked a little harder.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, you helped. I hated Chicago. The next guy who controlled me, he was a bit nicer.”