Boone and his guests went into the principal’s office. Boone closed the door behind them.
But when Amos, Charly, and Zelda sat in the chairs in front of the desk, and when Boone leaned against the desk with his feet outstretched, it was as if he only had eyes for Amos. He didn’t ask Charly, nor even Zelda, a single question.
“How well did you know Rita Mae Brown?” he asked Amos.
“Excuse me?” responded Amos. “I don’t know any Rita Brown. What are you talking about?”
“Rita Mae Brown was the young lady found dead behind your school this morning. Now I need to know how well did you know her.”
Charly looked at Amos. He knew the victim?
But Amos, again, denied knowing the victim. “I told you I don’t know any Rita Brown.”
“Rita Mae Brown.”
“Her either.”
Boone stared at the vice-principal as if he was disappointed. But when he crossed his legs at the ankle, Charly couldn’t help it. She looked down mid-way. Not surprisingly given the sensual aura that seemed to encompass him, she could see where he was very well-endowed.
“Let’s try again,” Boone said to Amos. “How well did you know Rita Mae Brown?”
Amos frowned. “Why are you still harping on that? I told you I don’t know the girl.”
“A couple of the kitchen workers told me earlier that they saw you arguing with the girl, as you call her.”
“Arguing with her? When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Here?”
“Behind the Walmart. Now does her name ring a bell, suddenly, to you?”
Charly could see a change in Amos’s demeanor. He suddenly looked stricken, as if he didn’t realize somebody had seen him. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “yes, I do recall some knowledge of her. But only fleetingly.”
“What were you two arguing about?”
“We weren’t arguing,” Amos said.
“All I have to do is go to Walmart and get the tape,” said Boone. “Do I need to do that, Mr. Yerkson?”
Amos exhaled. “Okay, there might have been a slight argument,” he said.
Charly looked at him again. Why was he lying, she wondered?
It certainly crossed Boone’s mind, too, as he questioned him. “What was the slight argument about?” he asked Amos.
“I don’t even remember,” Amos responded.
When Boone uncrossed and then crossed his legs again, he continued to just look at Amos, without saying another word. It was tortuous enough that Amos finally came clean. “She wanted to borrow money,” he said.
“Why on earth would she need to borrow money from you?” Charly found herself asking. She couldn’t help it. This man was the vice-principal of a Christian school. Why did he originally lie about his knowledge of her?
Boone glanced at Charly when she got in on the questioning. He’d been questioning suspects for damn-near twenty years. He didn’t think he needed any help.
“It’s what I do,” Amos responded to Charly’s question. He liked her as soon as he first saw her. “I help people in the community out. Especially my GED students.”
“GED?” Boone asked. “They teach GED classes at Saint Chris? That has to be a first!”
“Not here,” Amos said. “I teach a GED class at the rec center in Low Town.” Low Town, Charly would later learn, was the name for the poorest side of town. A place where poor blacks lived in apartments and row houses, and where poor whites lived in trailers.
“Was Rita Mae one of your pupils?” Boone asked Amos.
Amos nodded. “Yes, I believe so. But I had no idea she was the body behind the school.”
“I also heard,” Boone said, “that you had an affair with Rita Mae.”
Charly didn’t even look at Amos that time. She knew that couldn’t be right.
But unlike previous comments by the chief, Amos wasn’t quick with his denial on that one.
Boone was staring at him. Even Zelda looked at him. “Is it true?” Boone asked him.
Amos seemed defeated to Charly. He just shook his head. “No,” he said with little fight in his voice. “It’s not true.”
“So you’re saying my sources are lying?”
“If they claim I had an affair with Rita, yes, they’re lying. I barely knew her. I volunteer at the recreation center. I teach GED class. That’s how I know her. We had no kind of relationship whatsoever outside of that class.”
“But yet you lent her money?” Charly asked. Charly was stuck on that money-lending part. In her world, you just didn’t do that willy-nilly.
“I told you I lent many poor people money. Life had been cruel enough to them. I gave them a helping hand.”
“And argued with them about it?” Charly asked.
Boone smiled. That was exactly the question he planned to ask. But Amos didn’t bother to answer her.
“It’s a good question,” Boone said. “Why argue about it if giving away cash is what you do?”
“She kept coming back for more,” Amos said. “I didn’t think that was right. That’s what the argument was about.”
Charly could relate to that. People knew a good thing when they saw it and some abused it.
But Boone had too much information to fall for that line. “If you had no contact with her beyond lending her money,” he said, “then why did she have your cell phone number and your house number in her phone? Why did she call you nearly forty times after that argument, and eight times early this morning?”
That was shocking to Charly, especially when Amos didn’t seem to have an answer. He, in fact, looked completely defeated.
Boone stood up, pulled a pair of handcuffs from the small of his back, and moved over to Amos. “Stand up,” he said to him.
Amos stood up.
“Amos Yerkson, I am arresting you for the murder of Rita Mae Brown. You have the right to remain silent.”
As Boone began reading Amos his Miranda warning, Charly stood up too. She was shaken. The only man that showed her an ounce of kindness in that whole school, her direct supervisor and the man responsible for showing her the ropes, was now being arrested for murder? For murder? It was as if this was some kind of a cruel joke. She thought she left that kind of craziness behind with Darryl’s lifeless body, only to come all this way to Kentucky of all places to find craziness here too? It was unbelievable to her.
And the way Amos didn’t fight the charge, or try to break free from those handcuffs when an innocent man, it seemed to Charly, would be shouting from rooftops. She was stunned.
Amos finally spoke, but it was barely a whisper. “I didn’t do it,” he said.
But Boone wasn’t listening. The evidence was the evidence. He, instead, glanced over at Charly as he continued to recite Amos’s rights. He could feel her anxiety and could see the sadness in her eyes. For some strange reason, her sadness bothered him. It pricked at him. “You okay?” he found himself asking her. He wasn’t a caring man. Nobody in that town would ever confuse him for sensitive. But he hated, for some reason, to see her hurting.
“You okay?” he asked again, when she didn’t respond the first time.
But Charly was looking around, as if she didn’t know which way was up.