Marvin Bell seemed genuinely puzzled, said, “I told you everything.”
“Not all of it,” Drummond said. “You said you’ve never murdered anyone in your life.”
“That’s a fact,” Bell said.
“Never smothered anyone—a woman, maybe?” Drummond said. “Thirty-five years ago?”
“No.”
“You were her drug dealer,” the sergeant insisted. “She was dying of cancer, and no one was paying you for the heroin her husband was using to ease her pain.”
Bell shook his head.
“You got her husband damn-near-overdose high on smack,” Drummond said. “And then you smothered her with a pillow while he watched, so numb he couldn’t stop you.”
Drummond was breathing hard. He said, “Then, for almost a year, you made him work for you, and finally, when he was no use to you anymore, you tied that man to your car with a rope just like the one around your neck here, and you dragged that poor bastard through the streets, called him a wife killer, a mother killer.
“You alerted the police, said he’d murdered his wife, and gave him to the young men who were already in your pocket. Officer Randy Sherman and Deputy Nathan Bean. You paid them to make it look like he tried to escape. Judge Varney, a young assistant district attorney at the time, was there too. They pushed that man to the railing, and he didn’t understand why they went back to the cruisers and then turned and pulled their guns. Then they shot him, and he fell off the bridge and into the gorge. Isn’t that the way it happened, Marvin?”
Drummond had dropped the hammer and was holding the shotgun against Bell’s head so hard his hands were shaking.
“Yes, yes,” Bell whined. “That’s what happened.”
Judge Varney pounded with his gavel. “That is not true!”
Police Chief Sherman was on his feet, about to protest, but the FBI agent said, “Chief, you’re under arrest. And you too, Judge Varney.”
I don’t remember getting to my feet, only that I was, suddenly, and staring across the courtroom at Drummond as if down a vast tunnel of time.
“Who are you, Sergeant?” I said, realizing that Nana Mama was standing up beside me. “How do you know all these things?”
Tears streamed down Drummond’s expressionless face as he withdrew the shotgun barrel from Bell’s head and looked toward me and my grandmother.
“I know these things, Alex,” he choked out, “because in another lifetime, my name was Jason Cross.”