Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

expecting us. How come?”
    “Betty Schumway called me. She was upset to say the least—wondered if I knew what was going on. She’d seen your carefully orchestrated news conference on one of the local stations. I channel-surfed until I saw it myself.”
    “For Christ’s sake, Bob, why did you do it?” Sloan asked. “You’ve not only managed to bring your own career to a disgraceful end, but look at the other lives and reputations you destroyed in the process.”
    “Couple of reasons, actually. After Mary died, I bought a small ranch in Panama about an hour into the mountains outside Panama City—God’s country, a truly beautiful place. A gringo can live down there like a king if you come in with enough money. And I mean a king—cook, housekeeper, the whole package. I even had a young Panamanian señorita waiting for me. If you’re willing to lift a young woman out of poverty and treat her to the finer things, age differences don’t matter much down there.”
    “For chrissake, Bob, you earn a decent salary. I just don’t understand,” said Sloan.
    “Ah, but not enough money, Norm, at least not enough to live the lifestyle I had planned. And I almost made it—six more lousy months and I’d have retired, leaving all this shit behind.”
    “And the other reason?” said Sloan.
    “For whatever it’s worth, I never intended for it to go this far. I really didn’t. I’m not apologizing for taking from those asswipe convicts. They deserve whatever they get and then some.” A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth. “In a perverse sort of way, I got hooked on exploiting inmates. Imagine having the opportunity on a daily basis to threaten, intimidate, and take from a group of powerless lowlifes who have spent a lifetime doing exactly that to other people—kind of poetic justice, don’t you think?”
    “Christ, Bob. That’s pathetic,” Sloan muttered.
    Fuller continued, ignoring the insult. “But the killing, that was something altogether different. When we couldn’t get Vogue on our side, it threatened our entire operation. We couldn’t allow that to happen. We had reached a point where influencing parole release dates had become just as lucrative as the drug trafficking and protection rackets, and it was also a lot cleaner. Nobody in the Commission was particularly enamored with the idea of killing Vogue directly, so we came up with what we thought was a good idea—hire somebody who hated the man to do it for us.”
    “Enter Charles Watts,” said Sloan.
    “Yup. At first, we entertained the notion of leaving Watts alone after the hit. But we decided we couldn’t do that. He’s a druggie with a big mouth. At some point, he’d have gotten high somewhere and started talking. So we decided to take care of him ourselves—set it up to look like a suicide. As for Sorensen, not that he’s any great loss to the world, but we probably would have left him alone if you hadn’t discovered the staged suicide.”
    “We didn’t discover the suicide,” replied Sloan. “The Medical Examiner’s Office did, but what difference does it make anyway?”
    I stood transfixed listening to this sordid tale of greed and murder, knowing that not one word of what Fuller had just said would be admissible in court. The incriminating statement had come as the result of questioning without the Miranda warnings. A simple motion to suppress by a competent defense attorney would render the entire confession null and void. But Sloan was intent on ending this in his own way, and either was ignoring, or simply didn’t care about the legal niceties required by the justice system.
    “You’re going to have to come along with us now, Bob,” Sloan said sadly.
    “I’m afraid I can’t do that, old friend.”
    I stiffened and so did Kate.
    “The thought of spending the rest of my life in a cage waiting for the day the court appeals ran out, knowing you’d have to come for me for that last short walk, and then to go through the humiliation of having all those witnesses watch me die, hiding behind one-way glass—that’s not for me. I served my sentence each day I walked inside that prison. I wanted you to know how sorry I am for all this. I know I’ve let you down personally, and the department.”
    Glancing over at me, he said, “Sorry about your family, Sam. I heard about that on the news too. We didn’t order that. Stimson went after you on her own. I knew she carried a grudge, but I had no idea she’d