Frank drove to Austin Sunday afternoon. He checked into the Driskill Hotel in downtown, bought and read the local newspaper, and then went to the Travis County Jail. He asked to see Bradley Todd then waited in one of the cubicles in the interview room on the visitors' side of the Plexiglas partition. Bradley was now a senior star on the UT basketball team. He was charged with the rape and murder of Sarah Barnes, his ex-fiancée. She had been stabbed forty-seven times. The Bradley Todd who soon appeared before him was not the same Bradley Todd the jury had acquitted two years before. His eyes were different. He sat and picked up the phone.
"Hey, Frank." Not Mr. Tucker. "You want to earn another million bucks?"
Frank held the phone to his ear and the front page of the newspaper with Sarah's photo to the glass.
"Did you rape and kill Sarah?"
"Are you my lawyer?"
"Depends on your answer. But whatever you tell me is still confidential."
He nodded.
"Why?"
"She broke it off a year ago, our engagement."
"Why?"
"She said she got tired of all the other girls."
"And?"
"And I kept trying to get her back. But she wouldn't come back."
"What happened the night she died?"
"I went to her apartment and found her with another guy. I got pissed, her fucking around on me."
"She broke off the engagement a year ago. She wasn't your fiancée."
"Like hell. She was mine and she was always gonna be mine. That's what I told her."
"So you raped and killed her?"
"I had sex with her."
"Sex without consent is rape, Bradley."
"We had sex while we were engaged."
"It's not a lifetime pass. What happened then?"
"She tried to call the cops."
"So you stabbed her? Forty-seven times?"
He shrugged. "I got mad."
As if that made it justifiable homicide. They stared at each other through the Plexiglas. Frank did not want to ask the next question, but he had no choice.
"Did you rape and murder Rachel Truitt two years ago?"
Bradley's eyes were void of remorse.
"Yeah."
"You lied to me."
Bradley shrugged again. "You wouldn't have defended me if I had told you the truth."
"And Sarah lied to protect you?"
"We were engaged."
"Did she know you killed Rachel?"
"No. I told her I was partying on Sixth Street, which was true, but if she didn't say I was with her, the jury would convict me."
"They would have. So she committed perjury for you. And now she's dead. I believed you, Bradley. I thought you were innocent. Now another girl is dead."
"So are you going to be my lawyer?"
"No."
Frank got drunk in the hotel bar.