Fiend by Harold Schechter Page A

gave his usual, shrugging response: “I don’t know. I couldn’t help myself.”
    Next, he was made to repeat his account of the previous day’s events. This time, he displayed considerably more confidence about certain details, relating his story with a coolness that struck the observers as nothing less than remarkable in a fourteen-year-old boy in such daunting circumstances. He maintained his composure even when Savage suddenly leaned forward and announced that Jesse was under arrest for the murder of Horace Millen.
    “You can’t prove anything,” Jesse replied offhandedly.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Captain Dyer. “We found some pretty damaging evidence against you this morning.”
    Jesse appeared unimpressed.
    “Well, then,” said Savage, “if you did not kill Horace Millen,then I suppose you won’t mind going out to Mr. Waterman’s funeral establishment and looking at the body.”
    The statement had its intended effect. Jesse was visibly rattled. “I don’t want to go,” he said nervously.
    Ignoring his protests, Chief Savage nodded to Dearborn, Ham, and Wood, who immediately hauled the boy outside, bundled him into a hack, and drove him to the undertaking parlor in Roxbury. Jesse—his arms tightly clamped in the grip of Dearborn and Wood—was dragged inside and ushered into the embalming room, where a small, shrouded figure lay stretched upon a table.
    “I don’t want to see him,” Jesse cried, struggling to break free of his captors’ hold. “You can’t make me.”
    “Yes, we can,” Wood said grimly, then signaled to Waterman, who lifted the sheet from the tiny form. When Jesse tried to turn his head away, one of the detectives grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him to look squarely at the corpse.
    At the sight of the savaged body—the gaping throat, the ruptured eye, the perforated chest—Jesse began to tremble violently.
    “Did you do it?” asked Dearborn. “Did you kill him?”
    In a tremulous voice, Jesse replied, “I guess I did.”
    “What did you do it for?” demanded Wood.
    “I don’t know,” Jesse said weakly. “Something made me.” For the first time, he appeared genuinely stricken. “Take me out of here. I don’t want to stay here.”
    Seated again in the carriage, Jesse continued to tremble. “I am sorry I did it,” he said as the vehicle headed back to the police station. “Please don’t tell my mother.”
    “Where did you wash the blood off your knife?” Wood asked.
    “I didn’t wash it,” Jesse answered. “I stuck the blade into the marsh mud and cleaned it.”
    “What about your hands? Did you wash them?”
    There was no need to wash them, Jesse explained. He had been careful not to get any blood on his hands.
    When Wood asked Jesse what he thought should be done with him, the boy tearfully replied: “Put me somewhere, so I can’t do such things.”
    Not long afterward, the carriage pulled up at Station Six, where—in order to prevent him from communicating with other prisoners—Jesse was placed in an isolation cell with a heavy wooden door. By that time, Wood and his colleagues had gonewithout food since just after daybreak and were ravenously hungry. Informing Captain Dyer that they were going out for lunch and would return shortly, they requested that no one be allowed to see Pomeroy on any account during their absence. Dyer gave them his assurance, and the three men departed.
    From a purely professional point of view it had been a gratifying morning. The ghastly crime had been solved less than twenty-four hours after its commission. As he and his colleagues looked for a place to eat, Wood could not help feeling pleased. He had gotten exactly he was hoping for: a confession from Jesse Pomeroy’s lips.

18

It is a matter of great surprise to those conversant with the facts of the case that the Pomeroy boy, after his conviction of so many heinous offenses, should have been pardoned out of reform school.
— Boston Evening