ELSIE SHUFFLED SHEETS of paper, still warm from the copy machine, which contained Tanner Monroe’s handwritten statement.
At the conclusion of his interrogation that morning, the juvenile had asked for pen and paper.
“I want to make a written statement,” he told them. “In my own words.”
Ashlock advised him that it wasn’t necessary, they had the tape recording of his answers, and if he wanted to add anything, he was free to speak up. But the boy shook his head.
“Somebody could fuck with a tape recording,” he said. “No offense, dude, but it’s the truth. Erase something, add something, switch the questions up. I better put it down in handwriting, so I can be sure it’s my own words.”
Ashlock nodded. “Okay, then.” He instructed Elsie to hand Tanner her legal pad and pen. The adults watched in silence as the boy wrote.
Elsie observed as the boy scratched on the paper with the ballpoint pen, crossing out words and frowning in concentration; then he wrote at a rapid pace, only to pause again. Studying his face, she observed a faint sprinkling of hair on his upper lip, and the scatter of adolescent acne on his brow. Recalling her mother’s words, she pondered, Cutting a woman’s throat: how could he do it? Then she shuddered as a chilling thought followed: Did he do it?
Focusing on his hands as he wrote, she tried to envision them handling a knife rather than a pen. The hands were big enough; though the boy was normal height, he looked strong enough to overpower a middle-aged woman. Certainly, holding a weapon would give him the advantage. But as she stared at the hairless backs of his young hands, she wondered how he could be cold enough, at the tender age of fifteen, to take a human life. Maybe her mother was right; she generally was, Elsie knew from long experience.
Had he confessed on those written pages, her job would be much easier. But the photostatic copy in Elsie’s hands contained no confession, no admission of wrongdoing. She laid the statement before her on her desk, wishing she had a clearer barometer of the events on that school bus than the scrawled paragraphs provided. Still, Elsie thought it might hold a clue, a key to reveal the true events of the murder.
With a highlighter poised in her hand, she read:
I, Tanner Dylan Monroe, swear this is the truth.
Here is what happened with the bus. The true story.
I was hitchhiking from St. Louis like I said. A woman with a school bus gave me a ride at the Diamonds but there was another dude too she picked up later.
So I was asleep in the back but there was a lot of noise. And I saw them fighting and he had her pinned. Then he had a knife and he cut her throat when he held her down. I couldn’t do nothing because I was in the back.
Anyway after she was dead he took me prisoner. He made me drive and go in the middle of nowhere so we dumped the body there.
Then he made me drive and if I didn’t do what he said he would kill me, too. I couldn’t run or get help cuz he never let me out of his sight. He finally got off somewhere. I don’t know where it was at. I drove the bus but it ran out of gas and I stayed with the bus because I didn’t have money for gas and nowhere to go. The dude ran off.
That’s it except to say I am innocent and I just want to go back to St. Louis. And see my mom.
This is what happen.
Underneath those words, in a cursive scrawl, he signed his name: “Tanner Dylan Monroe.”
ODDI defense, Elsie had immediately thought. Other Dude Done It. It was easy to anticipate what the jury would want the state to provide when the defendant raised that defense; on rebuttal, the prosecution needed to show that there was no second passenger. They needed to prove to the jury that the crime was Monroe’s own act, and they must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. That was the state’s burden, the prosecutor’s job.
But first, Elsie must prove it to herself. She did not believe in proceeding on any case where she was unsure of the defendant’s guilt, and that was especially true in this instance, where the defendant was a boy of fifteen. Regardless of orders issued by Madeleine or Chuck, she could not present a case to a jury if she didn’t believe in it.
If the juvenile had committed a murder, he would have to pay; Missouri followed the trend in recent years toward certifying minors to be tried as adults for criminal acts. The state legislature had made it clear that the criminal courts would handle serious crimes committed by juveniles. But Elsie needed to be absolutely certain that the crime was his; that the evidence pointed to Tanner Monroe, and no one else.
Elsie toyed with the highlighter, thinking, Let’s see what you were up to when you were on the road, Tanner Monroe.
She tossed the marker on her desk and said, “Oklahoma needs a visit from a big ole Missouri gal.”
