Premeditated Murder Read Online Free PDF

“anything you say to us stays in this room. It's private, unless you decide to tell someone.”
    Thompkins nodded, but then winced, and a light sweat quickly appeared on his forehead. “Sorry. I asked the doctors not to give me the pain medicine so I could focus. Every once in a while, though, I move wrong and give myself a real good jolt.” He took a shaky breath. “Go ahead.”
    “The other thing is that the rules of ethics prohibit us from hearing one story,” Zack said, “and then putting you on the stand to tell a different one.”
    Terry hated when Zack did that. “Don't take that as an invitation to jerk us around, though,” he interposed. “We've been doing criminal work for over ten years, and Zack and I have got extremely sensitive bullshit meters. So tell us what happened, and we'll let you know whether there's anything we can do for you. Tell us a bunch of crap, and we're out the door.”
    For some reason, a smile spread across the big man's face.
    “And by the way, the fact that you're black is going to make this case ten times harder than it already is. Which really sucks. Just so you know,” Terry added.
    Thompkins's smile broadened. “You know, I can tell already that I'm really going to like you two,” he said.
    Maybe they were going to catch a break and find out the guy was a whack job.
    “Why don't you tell us what happened?” Zack said.
    “There's a lot of background leading up to this,” Thompkins said. “I'm not sure where to begin. After I graduated college, I started postgraduate work at M.I.T. Should I start there?”
    Background. Unbelievable.
I was born in a small log cabin—
Uh, excuse me, could you jump ahead to the part where you blow six people away? Terry started to pace.
    “How about a couple of hours before you were arrested?” Zack suggested. “Let's say, start at two or three that afternoon. We'll have plenty of time to get into the background later.” Thank God.
    “Oh. Okay. Let's see. By two that afternoon, I was already waiting for them in the apartment across the hall. I was renting it,” Thompkins explained. “I was expecting the last of them to come back at around four o'clock, so at about two, I made sure the gun was loaded and ready, and I started waiting. Since our doors were directly across the hall from each other, all I had to do was look through my peephole and I could see whenever they went in or out.
    “I don't know exactly when it was, but before I was really ready, their apartment opened, and one of them, the one with the big nose, came out into the hallway. But almost as soon as he started down the hall, he must have seen one of his friends coming toward him, because suddenly he was back in front of his apartment with this other guy—a short guy with a real thick beard. So the guy with the big nose goes in, and then while the short guy starts to follow him in, I open my door. I didn't want to have to knock on their door or anything. I just wanted to blast through while it was already open.
    “And that's just what happened. As soon as I got out into the hallway I started firing right into that door. The gun was incredibly loud, but I could still hear shouting and screaming—I figure from the short guy. He probably got hit from the bullets that went through the door.”
    Amazing. It was like attending a lecture titled “How to Commit a First-Degree Murder.” Premeditation and intent were a lock—the gunman had rented the place across the hall from his victims and then waited until the door was opened before he started shooting. He planned the whole thing. The prosecution was going to have no problem with that. Self-defense, defense of others, mistaken identity—all these strategies were a joke. Either they were going to have to prove that Thompkins was crazy, or they might as well just walk him right into the execution chamber.
    “That was