A Poor Boy's Confession

By Thom Whalen

Horrible crime. A rich family slaughtered in their kitchen. The pretty little girl’s throat was cut right in front of her mother. But we caught the perp coming out of the house. A seventeen-year-old kid from the slums. He confessed. DNA on his shoe puts him at the scene. It’s a slam-dunk. Except his mother’s preacher is trying to mess up our case. A twenty-nine-year-old ex-con who started his own storefront church a couple years ago. But don’t worry. Detective Drexel a tough cop. He’ll do whatever it takes to get this Pastor Leon out of our way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thom Whalen
• Release date: Jun 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310046889

Thom Whalen

Thom Whalen studied experimental psychology at UCSD (B.A.), UBC (M.A.) and Dalhousie University (Ph.D.). After working for the Government of Canada conducting research on the human factors of computer networks for thirty years, he retired to begin a new career writing fiction.If you wish to send him email, contact information is available at http://thomwhalen.com/ He eagerly awaits comment on his stories.

Book preview

Chapter One

They goin’ to kill my boy. Mrs. Lebrun wasn’t crying but her eyes were red and soggy.

My heart sank. You mean Victor? Three of Mrs. Lebrun’s half-dozen children were boys. Victor was the teenager; the others were still in elementary school.

She nodded as she sagged into one of the plastic chairs in front of my battered second-hand desk.

Who’s going to kill Victor?

The police. They say he killed a family in one of them big, fancy houses up in Brookeside and they put him in jail and they going to execute him. She could hold her grief back no longer. A sob broke and tears over-spilled her eyes and flowed down her cheeks. He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t kill no little girl. He’s not a mean kid. You got to be a mean kid to kill a tied-up little girl like they said he did and he don’t got that kind of mean in him. Anyone who knows him knows that he couldn’t have done what they say he did.

I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d been in juvy a couple of times and later in real prison. I’d known some – not much older than Victor, and no bigger – who’d shoot a baby in the head just to prove how gangster they are. In my experience, the less likely the kid looks, the more he figures he has to prove.

Victor was no angel. I heard that he had been going up to Brookside to break into rich folks houses and steal what he could find. Maybe some people in one of those houses saw him and he’d killed them so there wouldn’t be any witnesses.

But I couldn’t tell his mama that. They can’t execute him unless they convict him in a trial. If he didn’t do it, then they won’t convict him. Now I was telling the woman an outright lie. No one in prison is purely innocent – they’ve all done their share of crimes – but I’m damned sure that some of my cellmates hadn’t committed the crime that put them in the bunk next to mine.

Sometimes the cops figure that any excuse to put a bad man behind bars is good enough. And the cops figure that anyone who lives in Springer Park on this side of Concord Boulevard is a bad man by virtue of his address.

Mrs. Lebrun put her face in her hands and sobbed again.

I gave her a sympathetic look and a minute of quiet to regain her composure.

She raised her face and wiped her eyes. He didn’t do it but they made him sign a paper that said he did so now he’s going to go to death row to get executed.

He signed a confession? That was definitely not good.

They made him do it. They made him sign it. He didn’t do no murder but them police made him sign a confession anyway and now they going to kill him.

Does he have a lawyer?

I don’t know.

He better get one. I doubted that it would do him much good. The Lebrun’s didn’t have any money to hire their own lawyer. Victor’d get a legal aid lawyer who had too many clients and too little time to mount a defense and the prosecutor would have a signed confession and the judge would have an easy decision.

You got to help him. Mrs. Lebrun was looking fixedly at the black prison ink that covered my arms. You know about police and prison and the like. You been in the system.

I should have seen that coming. She didn’t come here just to get a strong shoulder to cry on. I’m here for you. We’ll pray for him together. God will help you get through this.

You got to go see him.

I hate jails. I never want to set foot inside again. They have chaplains there. Fine men who are ready to help Victor. They know how to minister to a man in jail. They’ll pray with him and talk to him and give him fine counsel. You’ll see. Reverend Anson was far from the finest man that I’d ever known, but he had helped me as best as any prison chaplain could. And his help wasn’t too bad because he’d set my feet on the path that brought me to start my own church, right here in my old neighborhood.

No. I don’t know no prison preachers. Victor don’t know none. He in terrible need. They going to kill him if you don’t help him. You got to go talk to him. You got to tell him what to do to get out of there. Her stare bored holes all the way down to my soul. I always be telling my friends all how you is such a good man. So helpful to folks in need. I bring them to your church. Now Victor and me, we need your help bad. I know everyone’s going to feel better when they hear that you’re going up to see my Victor in jail.

This was the real Mrs. Lebrun. Her implied threat was crude but effective. We both knew that she could do a lot of damage if she started telling everyone that I couldn’t be trusted when the going got tough.

I’m a big man, six-three and two hundred and forty pounds of solid muscle, and I have to confess to being devilishly handsome. When folks come to hear me preach, they take comfort in my size and strength.

But my church is young and fragile; my parishioners a fickle mob. A story about me abandoning one of my flock would burn through my congregation like wildfire and leave ashes and empty pews in its wake.

That’s right, Mrs. Lebrun. I’ll go see Victor this afternoon. Now why don’t you and me say a little prayer for him right now?

We bowed our heads together.

Chapter Two

I dreaded going to jail. It had been five years since I’d finished serving my time but I still had nightmares about it more often than I care to admit.

As soon as I stepped through the door, I felt like I’d never been outside. The vibration of heavy steel banging against steel; distant shouts echoing through the walls; the smell of desperation hanging in the air brought everything back. Every sense was saturated – sight, sound, smell. I could even taste the sweat that floated into my mouth on the thick air. A sluggish black gusher of hopelessness flowed up from the depths of my soul.

When I’d been locked in here, I’d been able to do nothing but struggle to stay alive every day. I got along any way that I could, sometimes by talking, sometimes by fighting, mostly by just hunkering down and enduring.

Everyone inside finds God because this is where He stays while the devil roams free outside. But it doesn’t matter how hard a man prays in here, when he gets released, he goes right back to the swamp of sin from which he came.

Except me. When I was released five years ago, I clung to the Bible like a life preserver. Fighting my way into Bible college was the hardest battle of my life. Nobody trusted me. Nobody believed in me. Nobody wanted me.

Even the prison chaplain, Reverend Anson, thought that I was crazy when I told him that I was going to go to be a minister. Sure, Leon. Sure. You do that. But think about a real job, too. I know someone who hires ex-cons. It’s good honest labor and he pays an honest wage. He doesn’t expect his men to work overtime for free. He pays full minimum wage for every hour worked. That’s a good deal for an ex-con.

I took the minimum wage job and I lived like a pauper in a tiny, moldy room for three years. Even my parole officer hated to come and inspect that stinking hole. I had no chance for a scholarship when I was a convicted felon, so I had to save every penny for tuition. I ate rice and pasta, I lost weight, I developed a nagging cough, and I made it through to graduation.

And here I am, back in jail, five years after I walked out.

I told the deputy behind the plastic window that I was here to see Victor Lebrun. That I was his spiritual counselor. She looked at the white collar at my neck, looked at her computer screen, and called for a corrections officer to escort me to the visiting room. I remembered CO Lansky and he remembered me. I’m a memorable guy and Lansky’s memories of me were neither fond nor nostalgic. I’d served a full eighteen months here – no time off for good behavior.

Lansky took me into a side room for a thorough body search. The kind that I’d endured so often as an inmate. A search that was intended to degrade and humiliate a man more than to find contraband.

Petty authority is only satisfied when every man has been brought to his knees.

And I’ve never met an authority more petty than Lansky.

Chapter Three

Pastor Leon? A thin, young man in prison orange shuffled into the room. His feet were shackled and his hands were manacled to his waist. They were treating him like he was a dangerous desperado.

I’d never met Victor in person, though I’d seen him on the street. It was his mother who attended my church, not him.

When he reached the other side of the table, I stood and extended my hand to him.

His manacles didn’t allow him to reach back but I leaned across the table and shook his hand as best as I could, regardless.

No touching, the CO shouted across the room.

That’s the rule in here, Victor said. They’s afraid that you might slip me a joint. Something to make an hour pass a little quicker. His voice caught when he reminded himself that he was going to be inside for the rest of his life, which might be one year or might be sixty. Inmates try never to think about their life passing away, day-by-day.

I know the rules, I said. I been inside just like you. As I spoke, I could hear my diction slipping back into prison-speak. I hated the sound of it.

Not just like me. You was just in jail for a couple of years. I got to go to death row. That’s what they tell me. Death row. He leaned a little closer. The other guys in here, they give space to a guy who’s shipping up to the graveyard waiting room. They’s afraid of catching the bad luck.

How old are you? I asked.

Seventeen. I turned seventeen last month. But my lawyer says they making me be an adult because my crime was so bad.

So the kid was a grown man as far as the legal system was concerned. But they would still bully him like a little kid. You got a lawyer?

Yeah. I got one when I was going into court. The judge said that I was charged with three counts of murder and how did I plead? And I said, ‘Not guilty,’ like my lawyer told me to. And the judge said that bail was out of the question and then they brought me back here. So I guess I’m a convicted murderer now.

Three counts of murder? His mother had only mentioned the murder of a little girl. No. That was just the arraignment. That wasn’t your trial. You got to stay here for months. Maybe more than a year. Then you’ll get your trial. But probably your lawyer will work out a plea deal and your trial won’t be nothing more than you telling them how you did your crime and then they tell you how many years you get.

I don’t know about all that. I just know that they going to give me the death penalty.

Who told you that?

The police.

The police don’t decide the penalty. Or even if you’re guilty. A judge decides that. What did your lawyer say?

Not much. Just that both lawyers got to talk out a deal together. Victor raised his eyebrows. You think I’m going to get out of here when my lawyer makes a deal for me?

I didn’t want to answer that. The kid had signed a confession. I doubted that Victor’s lawyer would do more than try to negotiate a life sentence instead of an execution. What do they say that you did?

They say I killed a little girl. Tied her up and cut her throat. And her mother and father, too. They say that I broke into their house up in Brookeside and I tied up the little girl first and then the mother next and then waited and killed the father when he come home. They say I killed the little girl and her mother so there wouldn’t be no witnesses against me. Only I didn’t do any of that.

Did you sign a confession?

Yeah. They made me do it. They grabbed me off the street and took me to the police station and locked me in a room. They kept talking at me all day and all night. They wouldn’t let me sleep. They just kept talking at me. One cop after another. They say that I could go home and go to bed if I confess. I kept saying that I didn’t do nothing but they kept saying that I did so. They say I a liar. They say that they had a knife with my fingerprints. They say it was covered with the little girl’s blood and my fingerprints were in the blood. They say that they got my hair from the house and witnesses who saw me going into inside. They say that they didn’t need my confession but I going to feel better if I got it off my chest. They keep telling me that all day and half the night and not let me sleep. I was tired as a dog and they told me that I could go home and go to bed and that I wouldn’t have to go to court for a long time. They say that I could stay home and take care of mama until my trial.

I was floored. With a whole rich family murdered and the cops getting a signed confession, even a life sentence with no parole might be a hard sell for the legal aid lawyer.

Victor kept talking. Now that the gates were open, the flood of words continued. I didn’t do what they say. I knew that. They couldn’t have my fingerprints and hair because I never went into that house. So I figured that I could sign their confession and then they’d have to look at the evidence and realize that it was all wrong and that I couldn’t have done them murders. I’d get to go home and get some sleep and the next day, they’d tear up the confession ‘cus they’d have to know that it couldn’t be right. They’d look at the fingerprints again and they’d look in their computer to see who really killed that little girl and they’d go arrest him. I was so tired. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.

Did you write out the confession?

Yeah. They gave me some paper and a pen and they told me what to write. I don’t remember everything that they told me to write down, but I remember that I was supposed to have got the little girl first and then told her mother that I’d kill her if she didn’t let me tie her up. That’s how I was supposed to have got the mother tied up; by telling her that I’d kill her little girl if she didn’t go along with what I said. Then, when they were both tied up, I killed both of them anyway. Everybody who knows me, knows that I’d never kill a little girl. I got two little sisters. I wouldn’t kill them. Everybody knows that. You know that. You can tell the police and the police will realize their mistake and let me go. You a pastor. They going to believe you. It was someone else that killed that little girl. It was some crazy bastard killed her, not me. Some crazy bastard. He looked like he was about to cry. That wasn’t good. Prison was no place for a man to let anyone see him cry. They prey on the weak in here.

I didn’t feel any better than him, but I wasn’t near to crying, I was getting angry, But I had learned to keep a tight leash on that when I was inside. This was no time or place to let my anger get control of me. What happened after you signed the confession?

They didn’t let me go home. They got real mean and they say that I was going to get a lethal injection for what I did. They put me in a cell and I crashed, I was so tired. The next day I told them that the confession wasn’t right. It was all a lie. I didn’t do any of the things that they told me to write down but they say that they don’t care. I confessed and that was all that matter. I don’t understand. Why didn’t they look at the fingerprints on the knife and see that they weren’t mine?

I didn’t want to tell him that they probably didn’t have any fingerprints. Or hair or DNA. Or a witness. Every word the damned detectives said was probably a lie. They’re allowed to do that, those fine, upstanding policemen. They’re allowed to tell any kind of dirty, stinking lie they want to get a confession. I’d heard stories like Victor’s from lots of other inmates when I was inside. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t true, a confession always puts a man away.

Victor didn’t understand how badly he was screwed.

Look to the Lord for strength, I said.

He looked back toward the door that led to the cells. I guess I’m not going to be out for the Fourth of July barbecue, am I? Maybe they’ll give us ribs for dinner in here tomorrow.

That didn’t seem likely to me. Let’s pray. I bowed my head.

Victor bowed his head with me.

I don’t know if Victor had ever prayed before, but he would now.

Forget church. God’s real house is a concrete mansion with many little rooms, all filled with the damned.

Chapter Four

On Sunday, I preached of Job’s trials. Folks liked the sermon. It’s an easy sell down here in S Park. Up in Brookeside, where people live in big houses with green lawn in the front yard and a swimming pool in the back, they’re mystified by the story of Job. They don’t understand that bad things happen to people who never did anything wrong. In their world, the real mystery is why so many good things happen to them for no reason. But they never question that.

In my neighborhood, it’s different. Folks are comforted when you tell them that their misery isn’t personal. Their life is just a game that God’s playing with Satan. Even as God plagues them with misery, disease, and death, He can still like them, still respect them.

After the service, while I was grinning and glad-handing the masses, Mrs. Lebrun set up her ambush back in my office.

I don’t know that she was the worst off of all my lambs – half of them got someone in jail; none of them can stretch their pay, or welfare, far enough; all of them know they’re being ripped off by everyone from the highest levels of government down to the junkie next door – but Mrs. Lebrun was the one who had convinced herself that I could give more than just spiritual guidance. So she slipped back to my office, sat in the plastic chair by my desk, and waited, silent at a cat, for me to return.

I’d slipped the white collar from my neck before I noticed her sitting there. Hello, Mrs. Lebrun. How are you today?

Victor’s still in jail. She wasn’t crying today. Now she had attitude in her voice.

She figured that she had the upper hand over me and I was affronted by that. Of course Victor was in jail. He’d confessed to murdering three people, an entire rich family, including a five-year-old girl, in cold blood. Surely she didn’t think that anybody was going to open his cell door, stand aside, and wish him a good day.

Did she think that it was me who decided that Victor had to stay in jail?

It’s a terrible thing that is being visited upon us, but God will give us strength to endure. I let my voice fall to a soft rumble. That’s my most reassuring timbre.

She’d sat through the sermon an hour ago. Surely she recognized herself as Job.

He didn’t do it. Her voice was shrill; she didn’t sound reassured and she wasn’t about to endure her trials as patiently as Job.

I thought that she could be right about her son’s innocence, but I couldn’t be certain. I could imagine Victor breaking into the victims’ house – that’s what he did, break into people’s houses – and I could imagine him being surprised if the owners came home unexpectedly. I even could imagine him panicking and grabbing a knife from the kitchen counter and stabbing someone. Kids like Victor did terrible things without thinking about them.

But that wasn’t what his confession said. According to what he told me, the whole family had been tied up and then, later, their throats were cut. It was hard to imagine Victor doing that. These murders weren’t a sudden impulse arising out of panic. They were elaborate. Calculated. They weren’t the panicked impulse of a sneak thief who’d been surprised.

And they weren’t public enough for a gangster. Victor would get a rep from gunning an enemy down in the street. That would say, Don’t mess with me. Cutting a little girl’s throat when she was tied up said only, Coward. It didn’t demand respect from anyone.

Even so, Victor might have done exactly what he’d confessed to. A lot of young men in this neighborhood felt a deep resentment against the rich folk who looked down on them from up in the hills. Victor had been expressing his resentment by breaking into their fancy houses and lifting whatever he could snatch before the police responded to the burglar alarms. Maybe this time he’d gone a step further and brought a knife into a family’s house to write his resentment in rich folks’ blood.

I’m sure that he didn’t do it, I told Mrs. Lebrun even though I wasn’t at all sure. It’s not a sin to lie when the lie does no harm and can only bring comfort.

Then you got to help him.

My little lie was bringing me no comfort. I can visit him again and we can pray some more if that will help. I had no desire to return to the jail but I would make the sacrifice if that would assuage this poor woman’s grief. I felt like a martyr of old. Maybe I was the Job in this office.

He don’t need prayer. He need a good lawyer.

That was the truth. The court provided him with a lawyer.

She scoffed. Legal aid lawyer. You know how much help a legal aid lawyer going to give him? He going to help the judge put Victor into the ‘lectric chair.

They didn’t use an electric chair any more – the current style was lethal injection – but I couldn’t let myself get sucked into discussing how Victor was going to be killed. That would be a dead end conversation. Literally. Worse, she was right that Victor’s legal aid lawyer was unlikely to go the distance for him. If I were a lawyer, I could help Victor with the law. But I’m a man of God so I can only help him with prayer.

You more than a man of God. You an ex-con. You know how the system work better than some legal aid lawyer puppy.

She had me there. I’ll see what I can do.

Not just pray for him? Do something?

I’ll do something. But right now, let’s pray.

After a few minutes of earnest pleading with God to do something to right the injustice that was being perpetrated on her son, Mrs. Lebrun was ready to leave me in peace.

As soon as she was gone, a sweet, sweet voice floated into my office. "I’m ready for my spiritual counseling now, Pastor Leon."

Don’t be shy, girl, come on in.

The face of a twenty-three-year-old angel peeked around the jamb. Balanced, flawless, smiling like to light up the whole room. You all alone? she asked.

All alone, Pixie. The young woman’s name was Priscilla, but even I couldn’t bring myself to call her that. Everyone in S Park knew her as Pixie.

I thought that V’s mama was never going to leave.

Me neither. I was expecting you to pop in at any minute.

No, sir. When I saw her sitting in your office, I knew that it was official church business and I stayed around the corner. I figured it best if she didn’t see me coming in here.

That was good figuring. Tongues do wag in my flock. My, they do wag.

Pixie giggled. I don’t know that it matters much. They going to wag whether they got something to wag about or not. They wagged about you being in jail and then they wagged about you being out of jail and they been wagging about you and your church ever since.

That’s okay, I said. I want folk to hear about my church. I don’t care if they coming to stare or coming to see if I fuck up or coming just ‘cause they got no place better to go. Whyever they be coming, they still be coming to God.

I want to come, too. I going to be screaming ‘bout my coming to God.

Half an hour later, Pixie was in my bed, screaming, God! Oh, God! I’m coming! just like she predicted.

She was a fine young woman and she found a carnal celebration of life to be a deeply spiritual experience.

I, too, was filled with the joy of life. Oh, Lord, did I feel fulfilled.

Afterward, when we were lying naked together, letting the sweat dry off our bodies, Pixie asked, What are you going to do about V being in jail?

Help him come to the Lord.

She had a cute little giggle that always made me smile. Not like you help me come to the Lord, I hope.

I’ll help him with prayer, Sister Pixie. With prayer.

What else? I heard you tell V’s mama that you was going to do more than just pray for his soul.

You got big ears for a little pixie. I stroked the finely-sculpted ears that we were discussing. They almost came to a point on top. They weren’t quite pixie ears, but as close as you’d find on a real girl. I wondered if wearing the name made her ears push up just a little on the top. Sometimes the mind does shape the body, or so I heard.

Your voice carries like a bass foghorn, she replied. "Ships at sea heard you tell Mrs. Lebrun that you