Overkill. Joseph Teller

you tell me about it,” said Jaywalker. His therapist used to say that, back when Jaywalker had gone into treatment following his wife’s death, because he couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, couldn’t even remember why he was supposed to. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” “How does it make you feel?” “What do you think about it?” The therapy hadn’t lasted too long. But bit by bit, Jaywalker had begun sleeping at night again, and getting out of bed in the morning, and life had somehow gone on. So who was to say? Maybe the therapy had helped. Maybe the same sort of dumb-assed questions might work with Jeremy.

      “We had a fight, him and me.”

      “A fight. With weapons?”

      “No,” said Jeremy. “With fists.”

      “Who won?”

      A shrug. “I did, I guess.”

      “Then what?”

      “He pulled a gun,” said Jeremy. “We fought over it. It went off. I got it away from him.”

      “And then?”

      “And then I shot it at him.”

      “Once?” Jaywalker asked him. “Or more than once?”

      “More than once.”

      “How many times?”

      Jeremy shrugged again. “I’m not sure,” he said.

      “But you killed him?”

      Jeremy’s answer was so soft Jaywalker couldn’t hear it and had to say, “What?”

      “I guess so.”

      “Shot him between the eyes?”

      “If that’s what they say.”

      “That’s what they say,” said Jaywalker.

      “Then I guess it must be true.”

      “Why did you shoot him between the eyes?”

      Jeremy seemed to think about that for a minute. Or maybe he was honestly trying to remember. Squinting through the wire mesh of the partition that separated them, it was hard for Jaywalker to tell.

      “Self-defense?” But the way Jeremy said the words, they came out sounding more like a question than an answer or a recollection. No doubt he knew nothing about the nuances of justification, the body of law that allows one to use force—occasionally even deadly force—to protect one’s self or someone else. But despite his ignorance, it was pretty obvious that even Jeremy knew it wasn’t going to be much of a fit to the events he’d described.

      Jaywalker figured it was as good a time as any to start finding out. “Was the guy armed at the moment you fired that shot?” he asked. “The one that hit him between the eyes?”

      “No,” said Jeremy. “Not then he wasn’t.”

      “Was he coming at you?”

      “No.”

      “Threatening you in any way?”

      “No.”

      “What was he doing?”

      Jeremy closed his eyes. Maybe he was trying to picture things as they’d happened that day, seven months ago. Maybe he was even trying to relive the incident, seeing if he somehow couldn’t make it come out differently this time. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and, looking directly at Jaywalker, said, “I don’t really remember.”

      So much for self-defense.

      They talked for a while more before Jeremy asked what time it was. And even though Jaywalker told him it was barely noon, Jeremy repeated the question five minutes later.

      “You want to make the one o’clock?” he asked.

      Jeremy nodded sheepishly.

      “Okay,” said Jaywalker. They hadn’t been talking all that long, but he sensed that still might amount to something of a record for Jeremy. And so far, all he’d been able to pull out of the kid was the most basic outline of the shooting and the events that had led up to it. But there’d be time, and Jeremy certainly wasn’t going anywhere. In New York State the right to bail is pretty broad, but it stops at the door of the accused murderer’s cell. And even before McGillicuddy had gotten a hold of the case, another judge had ordered Jeremy held in remand. Meaning there was no bail set at all. Not that Carmen Estrada and her fifty-eight dollars could have come up with it anyway.

      But before they parted, Jaywalker had one more order of business with Jeremy. “Do me a favor,” he told him, “and put these on.” Taking two pairs of woolen socks from his briefcase, he slid them beneath the wire-mesh partition.

      “Put them on here? Both pairs?”

      “Yup,” Jaywalker told him. “Otherwise the C.O.’s will take them away from you and have me arrested for smuggling contraband into the jail.” The C.O.’s were the corrections officers, and the truth was, they never would have had him arrested. Others, yes, but not Jaywalker. To them, he was one of the good guys. Not only did he talk like them and ask about their wives and kids, he had a law enforcement background. And most of all, he did right by his clients, even the ones who were jammed up the worst. Especially the ones who were jammed up the worst. In other words, he was one of them. So Jaywalker wasn’t worried about himself at all. He was looking out for the C.O.’s themselves, lest some captain spot Jeremy carrying in the socks and write up one of the C.O.’s for looking the other way and allowing them in.

      Jeremy slipped off his sneakers and did as he was told. But when he tried to put his sneakers back on, he found it all but impossible. He ended up having to leave them spread wide open. Lacing them up was no issue; shoelaces weren’t allowed on Rikers Island. They could too easily be used as a weapon, to strangle another inmate. Or to “hang up,” as in committing suicide.

      Jeremy stood up and tried walking a few paces. From the way he did it, it was clear he was going to need some practice.

      But his feet sure were going to be warm at night.

      4

      A REAL NICE KID

      He’d only been on the case three days, but already Jaywalker pretty much knew that the fact that Jeremy Estrada’s feet would be warm was about all the good news he should expect.

      Murder cases pretty much fell into two distinct groups, Jaywalker had long ago learned. There were the whodunnits, where the issue was whether the prosecution could prove that it was the defendant who’d committed the crime. And there were, for lack of a better term, what he called the yesbuts. That was his catchall category for all the other cases, where the identity of the killer was beyond serious dispute, and if the case was going to be won, it was going to be won with a “yesbut” defense. Yes, the defendant had killed the deceased, but it had been an accident, or he’d acted in self-defense, or had been too young or too retarded or too insane to make it murder, or—and this one you were unlikely to find in the statute books, unless maybe you were in Mississippi or Alabama or west Texas—the victim had needed killing.

      Unfortunately, none of those defenses seemed to apply to Jeremy’s case.

      To begin with, not only did Jeremy readily admit that he was the killer, but Katherine Darcy, if she was to be believed, had a handful of witnesses ready to walk into court and prove it to a jury’s satisfaction. So it wasn’t a whodunnit. Which meant it didn’t call for a SODDI defense, the letters referring to a highly technical principle of law which, spelled out in full, stood for Some Other Dude Did It.

      But when Jaywalker turned to the question of what exactly had made Jeremy do it, things didn’t get any more promising. The shot between the eyes at point-blank range could hardly be excused as an accident. And with Victor Quinones lying unarmed and helpless on the ground, self-defense was pretty much out of the question. Next, although Jeremy might look fifteen, it turned out