Determination (25 page)

Please God, don’t let me have a seizure here.
I focused on the man’s face and realized in that moment I had completely blanked on his name.

We’d met a couple of times, but Dad just kept calling him my lawyer. I started to ask him, but the door opened, and the detectives who had visited me in the hospital came into the room.
Showtime.

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Neither man spoke immediately. Detective Sanchez took a chair directly across from me while the other man, Isaacs, stood leaning against the wall nearest the door. Sanchez laid a file on the table in front of him and took a minute to flip through it before he looked up at us. Reaching to his left, he pressed a button on a tape recorder and then spoke into it.

“This is a recorded interview conducted by Detective Martin Joseph Sanchez, badge number 5951 of the San Diego Police Department, on Tuesday, the 4th of October, 2011. The time is now 5:23 p.m. Other persons present during this interview are Senior Detective Franklin Isaacs, James Mayfield, and his attorney Darren Troska. For the purposes of voice identification during transcription, I’m going to ask that each person present state his full name and date of birth. Let’s start with Detective Isaacs,” he recited before looking over at his partner with a nod.

“My name is Frank Isaacs. I’m a senior detective with the San Diego Police Department, badge number 3265,” the other detective said slowly into the machine. I noticed he didn’t give his date of birth as his partner had instructed. Apparently, that was only for us bad people.

“Counselor?”

“My name is Darren Ian Troska, counsel for James Mayfield, and my date of birth is April 14th, 1954,” the lawyer said, and then looked at me and nodded his encouragement.

“Uhm… I’m Jamie, I mean James Darryl Mayfield, and my birthday is February 23rd, 1992,” I stammered. Jesus, I even sounded guilty. Instead of looking at either of the detectives, I catalogued each nick and scratch in the surface of the table.

“Very good, Jamie,” Sanchez said and started looking through the file again. “Okay, we need to go over the details of what happened the night that Steven O’Dell was found dead. When we last spoke, you said that the two of you had gotten into physical altercations. Did you fight that night?” I looked at Mr. Troska, but he simply nodded, so I took a deep breath as he had instructed.

“No, we did not fight that night,” I said and closed my mouth quickly so I didn’t keep talking. Between the seizures and rehab, I still 160

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wasn’t sleeping very well, and I had no idea what slip might cause me to be in even more trouble. Sanchez wrote my answer down in his little cop notebook even though the tape recorder saved my answer for him.

“When was the last time you fought?”

I looked down at the table and thought hard. The last time we’d fought, Steven had burned my stomach and left me unconscious on the kitchen floor.

“It had been a few weeks at least. He didn’t like the lasagna I’d made and threw it at me,” I said as I pulled up the front of my T-shirt to show the detective the raw, scarred skin of my abdomen. He winced and gave me one slow nod before looking down to write again. Several moments passed as he continued to scribble on the small pad. I glanced at my lawyer, but he was watching Detective Sanchez. My palms began to itch.

“Whose idea was it to do the coke that night?” He stopped writing for a moment and looked up at me, watching my face as I concentrated on the question. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. I looked at the lawyer, who nodded again, giving me permission to answer. I just didn’t know what the answer should be. If I told him it was my idea to do the coke, would he think I spiked it? If I lied, what would he do if caught me in a lie later? My hands trembled on the table.

“Are you okay, Jamie?” Mr. Troska asked as he rested a hand on my forearm. The shaking calmed, but I still had no answer. When I looked up at him, he must have seen that written on my face. When he spoke next, he addressed the detective.

“Can we have a moment?”

Without a word, Detective Sanchez pushed a button on the tape recorder, and it stopped with a click. He and Detective Isaacs stepped out of the room after exchanging a look with raised eyebrows. They thought we were coming up with a lie. I was in so much trouble.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I stood up, hoping the distraction would lessen my stress. The lawyer put his hand on my shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

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“What I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else, right?” I asked, looking at my reflection in the huge mirror on the wall adjacent to the door. Though we hadn’t passed it coming in, I assumed it was a one-way mirror like I’d seen on television. The detectives probably stood just beyond the glass watching our conversation.

“No, I can’t.”

“Can they hear me?” I looked at the mirror again.

“No, they can’t listen to a confidential discussion between us because I’m your lawyer. What’s on your mind?” He looked genuinely concerned, and I wondered if the worry was for me or for the little tally for his win column. The thought came without provocation, just another example of my lack of faith in people, but remained nonetheless.

“It was my idea to do the coke,” I admitted. I didn’t trust him, not with my life, so I didn’t add that I’d spiked it with poison. “I’m scared if I tell them that, they’ll arrest me.” My hand shook harder, so I spread out my palm against the surface of the table in an attempt to make it stop. I knew that I looked like a junkie needing a fix, and right then, I really felt like one. Without hesitation, I’d gladly have taken whatever I could get my hands on to escape the reality of my life. The police, rehab, my father’s expectations, Brian’s absence—all of it weighed on me to the point where I didn’t want to feel it anymore.

“It’s okay to tell them that. We don’t want you to look evasive.

Even if it was your idea to do drugs, they were his drugs, and the poison was in them when he bought them,” he reasoned.

Steven bought the drugs with the poison already in them. Sure, let’s go with that. It certainly beat telling them the truth.

“Okay.” I rubbed my palms on the table and stared intently at the replicated laminate grain as I attempted to stop the tremors that could lead to a full-on seizure in the middle of the interrogation room.

“Just take a deep breath and focus on their questions. The sooner we can get through the interview, the sooner it will be over,” he said, and the roll of his eyes as he turned around didn’t surprise me. People got exasperated with me rather often, and I couldn’t really blame them.

Right then, however, I was terrified, and I didn’t care how he felt. He 162

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knocked on the glass and waved the officers in, confirming my theory about the one-way glass. I felt a fraction of a moment’s vindication before the door opened and the detectives came back into the room.

Then the fear overpowered everything else.

“I’m sorry. My client is having a problem with shaking in his hands. As we discussed on the phone, until his seizures are controlled, he’s prone to them under stress. We can continue for a while longer and reassess his condition. No one wants him to have a seizure in police custody,” the lawyer said with a knowing look.

“He isn’t in custody,” Detective Isaacs reminded him. “But, no, we don’t want him to need medical attention. Okay, I’m turning the tape recorder back on now.” He reached over to the machine and held a button down until it clicked. “Interview interrupted for a brief word between James Mayfield and his attorney regarding his medical condition. All parties have agreed to continue. Jamie, I’m going to ask the question again from before the break. Whose idea was it to do coke the night that Steven O’Dell died?” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“It was my idea,” I said. Then, trying to justify the answer, I continued even though my lawyer had told me to just answer the questions and not explain. It felt like a huge elephant had entered the room and sat down on one of the chairs across the table, staring at me.

“While we lived together, he got me hooked on drugs, and dealing with him was easier if I was high.” Mr. Troska glanced at me, and I closed my mouth tight against any further babble.

“Walk me through what happened,” Detective Sanchez said, and I thought back to that night, something I had done frequently over the last few weeks. I spent a lot of time trying to decide if surviving had been a good thing.

“He came home from work, and I told him I wanted to do something. Sometimes we did E, sometimes it was grass. That night he wanted coke. He said he was hungry, and he wanted to eat, do some blow, and… and have sex.” I could feel my face flaming, though I didn’t understand why. I’d done porn and my ass was all over the Internet, but telling these detectives that Steven wanted to have sex embarrassed me. “One of us ordered a pizza, I don’t remember Determination

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which… probably me. He went into the bedroom and came back with a baggie. He cut the lines on the mirror and took one before offering it to me. I did one, and I remember that it burned. But he didn’t make me do coke very often, so I didn’t… I didn’t realize.” The lie came out easier than I expected, and I hated myself for it. Just like when Brian and I were back in Alabama and I had to lie to keep us safe. It hadn’t worked then, just like it wouldn’t work with these cops. I’d end up in prison for the rest of my life, at the mercy of every thug there, cut off from my dad and from Brian. My hands shook harder.

“You didn’t realize there was anything wrong with the coke. Did Mr. O’Dell?” Sanchez asked, scribbling wildly in his little notepad.

“No, I don’t think so. I think he might have said that it was strong. Then he did another line. I think he did three or four before the pizza got there. I may have done one more. I don’t remember. I think we started to have sex at one point, but everything is blurry,” I told them honestly. I must have hallucinated at one point because I thought I remembered Brian being there with me. There was no way I’d tell them that, though.

They spent the next few hours going back and asking the same questions over and over in different ways, trying to make me change my story, but I didn’t. Steven brought home bad coke, we did some, he died—that’s all they needed to know. The interrogation room started to get hot after their fourth time through the same set of questions. My leg bounced wildly under the table, and the air began to thicken. I put my head down on the table just to feel the cool surface against my cheek.

The room spun.

“I think that’s enough for today,” the lawyer told the officers as I lay unmoving against the tabletop. At that moment, I didn’t really care if they threw me in a cell so long as they let me out of that goddamned room.

“That’s fine, counselor,” Detective Isaacs said, his face having lost the harsh edge to it as the interrogation went on. I didn’t know if he believed me, but he didn’t seem to be the bad cop anymore. Detective Sanchez was harder to read. I had no idea what would happen, but for then I appeared to be safe.

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“Let’s get you back out to your dad.” Mr. Troska pulled on my arm so I would stand, and though my legs shook, I found the strength to walk out of the room. My father waited on a bench and shot up when he saw us come back through the double door.

“Jamie, are you okay? Jesus, you’re pale as death,” my dad said as he pulled me against his chest. I hung limply in his embrace and let the lawyer tell him what happened. They’d asked me about that night.

They were hard to read. They would probably make me come back. He had no idea if they would charge me. At least, the charges were still up in the air. When we’d walked through the doors a few hours earlier, I’d thought for sure they would arrest me and I wouldn’t be able to see my dad again.

“I just… I want to go home.” My voice sounded paper thin, like one good breeze would rip it right down the middle. I stood staring at my father as he spoke to the lawyer, not caring what either of them had to say. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and not think anymore—

about the police, about drugs, even about Brian.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked as he escorted me from the police station toward his waiting car. I thought about it for a long time. The crushing loneliness that came from holding that horrible secret in my heart might be lessened if I told him. Maybe if he understood just how bad things were with Steven, he could forgive me.

I needed him to forgive me. I just couldn’t find the balls to tell him his son was a murderer. He already knew I was a drug addict and a whore.

One more weight on the scale and he’d be done with me. I couldn’t afford that.

“I just want to go home. Please, can we go home?” The whiny plea grated on my nerves, but I just couldn’t stand being me anymore.

The rehab doctor had given me sleeping pills, and I’d been too scared to take them.

Right then, I needed them, and that scared me more than taking them.

Determination