Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery Read Online Free Page B

Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery
Book: Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery Read Online Free
Author: Clare O'Donohue
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths
Pages:
Go to
and my little brother. It broke her heart when I got put in here. She wanted something better for me, and I let her down.”
    “Does she visit you?”
    “She’s dead. Heart attack three years ago. I didn’t get to go to her funeral.”
    “Did she visit you?”
    “Yeah. And my brother came for a while. But he don’t bother no more.”
    “Where is he?”
    Brick shrugged. “We’re not in touch. He don’t want to know me. I think he would of liked it better if I’d gotten the needle.”
    “That can’t be true.”
    “Doesn’tmatter, me being dead or alive. If you ain’t got somebody in the world that cares about you, then you already dead.”
    He stared right into my eyes on that one, with a certainty in his voice that made me feel more exposed than when he had been looking at my breasts.

Six
    A ll documentaries are about voyeurism. Whether the subject is treasure hunters, aspiring models, or convicted killers, the role of a producer is to give viewers an intimate look at the real world of the subject’s life. But the real world is dull. So a producer’s job is to juice it up by “casting” each subject the way you would for a movie—a hero, a villain, the plucky underdog….Some shows tape for weeks, waiting for one normally placid person to have a meltdown. And that’s what you see on the show—not the twenty-two days of acceptable behavior, but the twenty-two seconds of yelling. It may not be accurate, but it’s entertaining. Most shows don’t have the time or the budget to wait, so the “characters” are created by asking whatever questions will get the answers the producer needs.
    As I interviewed Brick I tried to figure out his role. He talked about his adventures as a child thug, recounting crimes with the same nostalgia I might have for family vacations. If I played it right, asked the right questions, he could be my unrepentant sociopath, or with other questions, my nice kid gone wrong. I realized as I was studying him, though, that he was studying me.
    “I did some small stuff when I was a kid. I ran some dope, just holding it for older kids. You know, no cop gonna worry about a ten-year-old. Then I did a little stuff with guns. Holdin’ on to them. Then I started with drugs,” Brick told me.
    “Taking them?”
    “I never did that. Not really. Mostly I just sold it.”
    “You were in a gang.”
    “Everybody I knew was in a gang.”
    “What was your first arrest?”
    He thought for a moment. “It was a piece I had that had been used on somebody. I thought it was cool to have something that had, you know, put air into a guy’s head.”
    “How old were you?”
    “I was fourteen, maybe fifteen.”
    “When was the first time you used a gun?”
    “On somebody?”
    I nodded.
    “I guess after I got out of juvie. Maybe sixteen.”
    “What did you do?”
    He smiled and seemed a little embarrassed. “Some punk kid called me skinny. I always had a little trouble keeping on weight. I eat, but I guess fat just don’t like me. Anyway, he calls me skinny, so I capped him.”
    “You shot him?”
    “Yeah. It’s an Irish thing. You know that?”
    “Capping someone?”
    “Yeah. The Irish bad guys—what you call ’em, the IRA—they used to shoot people in the kneecap. Everybody does that, but they really made it an art form. I read that somewhere.” He wagged his finger as if he were scolding me. “You should know that, Kate Conway. Ain’t you an Irish girl?”
    “My family came over a few generations ago, and from a different part of Ireland,” I said. “You like to read?”
    “Knowledge is power.”
    “Francis Bacon.”
    He smiled widely. “Yeah. You know that dude? He was cool. He was all into sensory experience leading to knowledge. You know that?”
    “A little. Has sensory experience led you to knowledge?”
    “First time I entered a woman, I learned everything I needed to know. Every time after I’ve just been chasing that high.”
    I laughed.
    “You think it’s

Readers choose