Murder Confession Part 4

It's not as though I feel superior to these cops, it's more like they're underestimating me. They're used to people who break down and confess or slip up on their story. I wouldn't be doing either.

Heinrich was quiet for a moment and then he looked me straight in the eyes and said, "You and your husband have been having problems..." It was a bad attempt at an open-ended question. I could have answered yes or no and you never ask yes or no questions when you're trying to get answers out of someone. It occurred to me that Heinrich was an idiot.

After he asked me a bunch of stupid questions about my husband and the day he died, I squared my shoulders and sat straight up. I spoke to him for the first time.

"Listen Detective, I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. I can sit here staring at my lap all day and if you want to entertain me while I do that, it's fine with me. But, just to be nice, I'll say this one time, I am not going to answer any of your questions. I'm still waiting for my attorney."

I guess he believed me because he just straightened out some papers and walked away.

When I got back to the pod I walked straight to my cot. There were 4 blue packs on my pillow and my cot was all made nicely and neatly. I looked around and saw a few smiles. I still didn't understand why these ladies were treating me so well. I really needed the caffeine right then so I took my cup, emptied the blue pack into it and then I went over to the sink to let the water run hot. That was the only way we could make coffee...instant powder in hot jail tap water.

I went back to my cot and sat down on the side of it. I was wondering why my father hadn't gotten a lawyer for me yet. I wondered a lot of things since I hadn't heard a word from him since he said he would try to find me an attorney. I had no way of knowing what was going through his mind at any given time.

He's my father and I love him but he can be a prick. Once when I was in the emergency room after my second husband had given me a concussion, he showed up and I overheard my husband telling him that I was "messed up on drugs". I wasn't, I had a head injury.

My father asked the doctors to drug test me and I said that would be fine. Then, my father said to my husband, "If her urine is clean, I will never believe a word you say again." Then he looked at me and said, "If your urine is dirty, I'll never believe a word you say again."

Well, my urine was clean and my father has never stopped listening to the lies that my ex has to tell about me. I've only seen that fool twice in 20 years, at graduations for our kids. But somehow he fancies himself an expert on me and my daily habits. Between him and his idiot drunken wife, they could have called my father and said anything...who knows? I could be waiting for an attorney that isn't coming.

I decided that it didn't matter. Things will work out, I'm sure. If Manson had an attorney, I would too. One way or another, it would be taken care of.

I looked up to see Anna Nicole and two other ladies standing in front of me. Anna spoke to me first.

"Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"Did you really kill your husband because he was having an affair?"

I just had time to respond quickly before the guard called my name again. "I never knew that he was having an affair. I haven't seen any proof of one either so I don't even know if that's true or not." Anna looked baffled.

She still looked baffled as I walked over to the guard who was waiting for me at the door to the pod.

She led me back into the area where I spoke to Heinrich but this time there was no one in one of the upstairs windows...there were two men in suits standing outside of an office area. The guard sat me on a bench right near the two men and put me in shackles. Just then I noticed a long line of other female prisoners who were all chained together. I assumed they would add me to that line but they didn't. The two men walked me separately from the other women.

I didn't bother asking where I was going. This was turning into one long escapade and the suspense was beginning to be fun. Everything was a new experience for me and I decided to look at it like I looked at the South when I first moved down there from Chicago...as a sociological study. This was just another aspect of life that I was lucky enough to experience.

Most people don't get to go to jail at all. I didn't think I'd be staying there for any length of time but I didn't give it much thought either. I was pre-occupied with taking it all in.

We walked down a bunch of long halls and we came out at the same spot where I had come in. They took the ladies who were chained together first and put them in the back of a van. The van was divided into two sides and after the other chicks were in their side, I was placed in the other side alone.

As soon as the two men in suits shut the door, the other women started talking to me like the women in my own pod had done when I first walked in. I was beginning to feel a kinship with all of them. It was obvious they all felt as though they knew me.

At one point I asked why I was by myself while there were 5 people on the other side. The answer surprised me. "Because you're a violent offender."

I never thought of myself as violent. Besides killing my cheating husband, I have never hurt another person in my life. After a bit more discussion I learned that the entire pod that I was being kept in was for violent offenders. That means that every single one of my pod-mates were all violent at one time or another. Sweet.

We pulled up to the courthouse and I assumed that I was going to go before a judge. The two suits walked over to the van after the "tame" women were led away. They opened the door, helped me out and took me past the courthouse into the police department. I didn't like that at all.

I found myself sitting on a chair in the middle of a six by ten foot room with walls that seemed to be covered in pieces of carpet. Up in the corner to my right was a video camera and I looked at it realizing that they were probably looking at me.

They left me in there for what seemed like an hour before one of them walked in and introduced himself as Craig Bachar. He was some sort of homicide investigator with the state police. I don't know why they brought in the staties, but they did.

Craig looked at me and said, "And your name is..."

I chuckled and responded, "You don't know? Why did you bring me here?"

He was not amused. "We're here to discuss your husband's death."

"OK then, go ahead."

He had a few papers in front of him and he was nervously shuffling them around. He looked down at the top paper and said, "So, this is your statement."

It didn't sound like a question so I didn't reply.

He snapped at me, "Is THIS your statement?"

"I don't know, I can't see it."

He handed me a copy of what appeared to be my written statement about what happened the day the bum breathed his last.

"Yeah." I said, "It looks like my statement. Of course I haven't read it all, but it does seem to be the one I wrote."

He inhaled a deep gulp of air. I didn't know how to read that at all. Then he asked, "Is there anything that you'd like to add to your statement?"

"Nope. It all seems to be here."

That was a bit of a dead end so he went at it again only like this, "Can you tell me what happened again?"

"It's all in the statement, nothing's changed since then."

Then he got up and walked out of the room without saying a word. I glanced up at the video camera and then down at my shackles. I looked back at the camera and asked, "Who ever is out there...could someone take these shackles off? I promise not to run away."

There was no answer and another 20 minutes went by before a different cop walked in and sat in the chair that Graig had been sitting in.

His name was Mark and he was a total moron. I could read that from the beginning. He was about 5'6" tall and all muscle. The guy had to work out for hours a day to get that sculptured. He was an Italian guy who looked out of place in the South. He pulled the chair closer to me and then he leaned over so that his nose was about 6 inches from my nose and he stared at me.

First the first few seconds, I'm sure I had a startled look on my face. I didn't expect that at all. Then, I noticed his bad breathe. That was all it took. I started laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to make it stop. I could barely catch my breathe to ask Mark if he would take my shackles off.

He didn't. I think it was the laughter that screwed me.

Anyway, he left the room for what I figured would be another 20 minutes or so when Craig walked back in and sat down in his chair.

"Mrs. Cardis..." I interrupted him. "Please, call me Jean."

OK then, Jean, I want to know about what you were doing before your husband died. You said in your statement that you were gardening?"

"You know Craig, may I call you Craig?"

"Sure."

"Craig, I have nothing to add to my statement."

"This question has nothing to do with your husband's death, why would you be afraid to answer that one question?" he asked with a confused look on his face.

"If it has nothing to do with my husband's death, then it's irrelevant. And I'm not afraid to answer you, I just don't want to." I looked down at the shackles again and became even more resolute. Once again, the guy got up and walked away.

This time I looked at the camera and said, I'm about to pee on this chair!" That did it. A uniformed cop came in and led me to a bathroom. It had the same silver toilet but it had a door. That was good because I needed to take a xanax...badly. I couldn't believe how easy it was to keep those pills taped to my legs. I was patted down and asked to pull my bra out and they checked my shoes and my feet, but that was it. A lady cop was right there as I changed into my lovely jumpsuit...but she wasn't paying a bit of attention to me. Anyway, I took 2 of them and they burned my throat going down again so when I came out of the bathroom, I asked for some water which he promptly got for me.

Back in the carpet walled room, I sat there thinking dreadfully sad thoughts. I thought about how my husband had treated me so badly for the entire summer. It was devastating. The man who once blatantly adored me was all of a sudden disgusted with my presence. That was a deep cut to deal with. Instead of looking at me with love in his eyes, he looked at me with the disdain you hold for someone who is stopping you from getting what you want. He wanted someone, but it wasn't me. Oh yeah, he had to go. Pity...but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

The xanax finally kicked in and I relaxed back into my chair. Just then Mark came back. I looked down at my lap and stared at it, thinking about the betrayal that I felt. I couldn't hear a word that goofball was saying. I had totally tuned him out.

A few different guys and one chick, tried to talk to me that day. I never demanded they stop, I just didn't say a word. I started at my lap for a long, long time.

Eventually they decided to take me back to jail. As I was walking out, Craig was standing near the doorway. He asked, "Why wouldn't you speak to us?"

I responded, "Because no one would take the shackles off of me." His jaw dropped and I turned to follow the leader cop who would be taking me back to the van. I didn't see those suit guys again that day.

Dinner that night was the same as it had been the day before only the congealed substance covering the fake meat was yellow instead of brown. I guess it was fake chicken that night.

I was starting to figure out the hierarchy in the pod of violent women in which I found myself. I seemed to be at the table of the "in crowd". That was cool. But I never once forgot that any one of those women would probably sell me out for ten bucks in commissary money.

After dinner two of the chicks from my table started walking around the pod as they did three times a day. They walked the largest circles that they could possibly walk and sang oldies as they did it. They were both middle aged and obviously quite enamored with each other. Their lesbian tendencies didn't bother me, I liked the music they were singing. So, I got up and walked the circles with them, all the time singing songs from the 70's. It was actually quite fun and it kept my mind occupied.

The women quickly figured out that I wasn't going to talk about what I had done. But that didn't stop them from telling me what they had heard. I was privy to all the latest gossip about myself. The press even had a nickname for me, Jealous Jean. I thought that it was pretty lame but I'm not in charge of such things.