CHAPTER 26

LEEWOOD FOLCRUM

I NMATE 82145

On December 6, I was the first one at the scene. We got a 9-1-1 call from a neighbor who had heard girls screaming in the Folcrum trailer, which was in the Daisy Acres trailer park. I'd actually been to that specific trailer before, when Leewood's wife died. We knocked on the door, but no one answered, so we started looking in the windows. I looked in one, which turned out to be Jenny Folcrum's bedroom, and I could see the dead girls and Leewood. He was sitting in the doorway and holding Jenny in his arms, and he was crying. That's something I don't hear people talking about, but he was actually bawling. Bawling and saying that he was sorry. He said that over and over again, and then he clammed up and wouldn't say anything to anybody.

—Luke Plakenhorn, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department

"This motherfucker is more regular than a high school girl's period." I peered in the window of the visitor room and waited for Redd to unlock the door.

"Next time, ask him to bring a few extra sandwiches. You're eating better in there than we are." Redd knelt on one knee, his movements slow as he worked the key into the lock. I glanced over at Johnson, who leaned against the wall and watched, one hand resting on his protective vest.

Both men were hefty—two hundred pounds, at least. If I tried to run, I wouldn't get far. The doors on either side of this hallway were locked, cameras recording the space, and between the two of them, I'd be flat on my back within sixty seconds, even if I did manage to land a swing during the process.

It wasn't worth the swing, and I wouldn't cause trouble for either of these two. We had bad COs and okay ones, and they fell on the better end of that spectrum. They didn't fuck with me and I didn't fuck with them, and that's how everything stayed smooth.

"This guy some sort of reporter?" Redd twisted the key, and the tumblers loudly clanked open.

"A researcher. Once I'm gone, you all can read about me in an academic journal somewhere." I smiled down at him. "Well, not you, Redd. But someone who can read. Maybe Johnson has a friend who knows a friend who can sound out the big words."

Both men chuckled as Redd hefted upright, his breath wheezing.

"You good?" I asked.

"Shut the fuck up. You ready to go in?"

"Ready."

He shuffled me back a few steps and nodded to Johnson, who swung open the door. On the other side of the glass, Tim Valden rose to his feet as if I were a king, making my entrance.

"I went and talked to Wally."

Today, he'd brought Chick-fil-A. I'd never had Chick-fil-A. If it was in business when I was out, it hadn't been in our town, and the idea of a fast-food restaurant based around chicken wasn't something that appealed to me.

That opinion changed the moment I bit into a fried-chicken sandwich worthy of a county fair gold medal. I set the sandwich down on its wrapper at the mention of Wally Nall. Bet he'd ended up losing all his hair.

"He bald yet?" I asked.

"Uh, no." Tim linked his fingers together in front of him, his elbows sticking out from his body like two chicken wings. "Has a full head of white hair."

"Damn." I shook my head and picked the sandwich back up. "What'd old Wally say?"

"Some interesting things."

"Yeah? Like what?" There was also a pile of waffle fries, and I eyed them as I took another bite.

"He talked about your wife, Jessica."

"Yeah, he didn't really like Jessica." I wiped at my mouth with one of the brown napkins. "He call her a cokehead?"

"He said she did drugs and that you drank a lot."

"Real insider information you got there, Timmy," I said sarcastically. "Your book's going to be a bestseller."

He smiled, but the gesture was starting to run thin on the edges. "I'm not writing a book, Leewood. You know that. Everything you tell me, it's only going to be read by the doctoral-review team and myself."

I didn't really care if he shouted our conversations from the rooftop. I shrugged. "Yep. We partied. Call DFS."

"And he said that you and Jenny were close."

"What father-daughter ain't?" I sat back in my chair and wiped off my hands.

"Is that what you and Jenny had? A typical father-daughter relationship? Because I got to tell you ... most fathers don't take a knife to their daughter."

Anger swelled, but I learned years ago to contain that shit. It didn't even make it up my chest. "I'm innocent—or didn't you discover that in your research? Someone came into the house and did all that. It wasn't me."

"Right. Even though your fingerprints were on the knife—"

"I'm sure yours are on the knives in your kitchen."

"And you were sitting there, covered in blood, holding Jenny's body when the cops arrived."

I sighed. "Find your child bleeding to death and tell me you won't hold her in your arms."

"You didn't find them, Lee. The police dug into this. Your defense team exhausted this. They looked for evidence of an intruder. None was found. No outside DNA or prints. No one came in, killed those little girls, then left. Didn't happen."

He thought he knew so much. I shook my head. "Don't know why you're here if you already know everything."

"I'm here to understand why."

"Why the girls died?"

"Yes."

"People kill people all the time. This isn't a new thing, Timmy. Go bother one of the other three hundred convicted killers in this building."

"People kill people all the time ... due to motive." He spread his hands. "What was the motive?"

"I didn't have one."

"Exactly. So why do it?"

I leaned forward and leveled him with a look. "Why are you here?"

He blew out an irritated breath. "To understand your motivations."

"To understand my motivations for killing those girls?"

"Yes."

"Then you're wasting your time, because I didn't kill them." I glared at him, not knowing why I was even talking to the guy. Why did I care whether he believed me? Why didn't I just tell him what he wanted to hear, then go back to my cell?

Because then he'd leave.

I started to stand, then sat back down. "Look, I can't explain something that didn't happen."

He groaned. "Listen, Leewood. I'm sure there's some part of you that wants to tell your side of the story. The real story, not this bullshit that you've claimed for the last twenty years. In fact ..." He made a big show of closing his notebook and reaching forward, turning off the recorder. "What if I make a deal with you? I won't publish anything. Won't include you in my research. I won't breathe a word of anything you tell me, not until after you're dead and in the ground."

"No," I said flatly. "Doesn't work for me."

"So, there is something for you to confess."

"I didn't say that, but yes, there's shit about this situation that you wouldn't understand."

"I know that you're dying."

I frowned and took a beat, processing the information. "Where did you hear that?"

"It doesn't matter, and I didn't need to hear it from anyone. You've looked like hell, and getting worse each time I've come. How long have they given you? Months? Weeks?"

I folded the wrapper around the final bite of the chicken sandwich and pushed it away.

"Look, my dad passed from cancer. He thought he had two months left, then didn't wake up the next morning. Whatever you have, life is delicate. You don't know when it will end. Do you really want to take this to the grave? Once you die ... that's it. No one will have closure. No one will ever know the truth."

He thought that was a bad thing, but there was a reason I was keeping my mouth shut. The threat of death wasn't going to change that. If anything, it meant I was almost to the finish line.

"I'm sorry." I stood. "Like I said, I can't tell you about something that didn't happen."

He stared at me, incredulous, as if I should be champing at the bit to confess everything. But his "offer" was a worthless one. I was in jail. It wasn't like confessing to the crime would change that. Confessing the truth, though ... that would.