she been abducted by Petrović or the man in the Escalade?
Joe folded his hands on his desk.
This was unusual for him. He didn’t know what to do.
CHAPTER 58
It was after 7:00 p.m. when Conklin and I escorted Dennis Lopez from the back of the cruiser into the Hall and gave him a brief elevator ride to Homicide.
We had detained Lopez on reasonable suspicion, but that was short of probable cause, which would have allowed us to get an arrest warrant and toss his butt in jail.
Reasonable suspicion meant that anything he said could be used against him, but after questioning him for a short time, like twenty minutes, we would have to charge him and read him his rights, or let him go.
I hoped he’d break under pressure, confess to killing Carly, or give us something that would lead to the two missing schoolteachers. And that they’d still be alive.
Interview 2 was available. Conklin pulled out a chair for Lopez, and I kept my hand on his shoulder until he sat down. Time was blowing past.
Conklin removed the cuffs I’d slapped on Lopez in the basement, saying to him, “Okay? You should be more comfortable now. Can we get you something to drink? Soda?”
But Lopez had had experience with the police before. He turned down our offer and answered “No,” “No,” and “I don’t know” to our questions. Ten minutes into our interview, he asked, “Am I under arrest?”
“No,” I said. “We’ve brought you in for questioning. We’re detaining you on reasonable suspicion of having committed a crime. That’s because when I ordered you to stop, you stepped on the gas. You can’t do that. Like I told you, you broke a law.”
“Oh. But to be clear,” Lopez said, “can I leave?”
“Not yet,” I said. “That’s the detaining part. But you’re correct that you’re not in custody.”
“If you decide to hit the street,” Conklin told him, “we’re going to upgrade you to suspect. We’ll be taking a much harder look at you. We’ll work with the DA on getting probable cause, and that means search warrants and cops watching you until you screw up. Which I think we can count on.”
“Actually, I want to help,” said Denny.
I said, “Okay, good. Let’s get to it.”
So I asked Denny for the third time, “When was the last time you saw Carly Myers?”
“I don’t know her.”
I almost lost it. He was screwing with us, and I had no power to turn him around.
I leaned in, and speaking in a hard, cold voice, I said, “I swear, Denny, either you help us or you become the focus of my life until you’re in jail.”
Lopez used a minute of our precious time to think things over. Then he said, “The last time I saw Carly was a couple of weeks ago. I guess. I don’t keep a calendar.”
“You’re sure you didn’t see her last week? Let me give you a hint,” I said. “Carly and her two friends were seen leaving a bar called the Bridge on Monday night.”
“I. Didn’t. See. Her. How am I supposed to prove that? I got a question for you. How many hookers get killed every year in this city? A dozen? Do you know? Do you want to grill me about them? Do you think I go around killing working girls? Are you out of your minds?”
When he’d finished venting, Conklin said, “Let me help you out. You were seen on Tuesday night at the Big Four, where Carly was murdered. Your taco ride has been seen there frequently. The Big Four manager knows you were pimping for Carly. That’s what the DA is going to tell the judge. You were the dead woman’s pimp. You were seen at the crime scene around the time she was killed. We’re asking you about a woman you knew and did business with. Follow me?”
Denny nodded and all of the air went out of his balloon.
Conklin said, “Right now our forensics lab is going over the tacomobile, and the DA is getting a warrant for your DNA. A foreign hair was found on Carly’s body, and if the DNA on that hair matches yours, you’re our guy. You’re it.”
“I didn’t kill Carly,” Lopez told my partner. “I’ve never had sex with her. I’ve never even touched her.”
“Then you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling us every single thing you know,” I said.
Conklin asked, “How about it, Denny?”
CHAPTER 59
Denny thought over the win-win suggestion I’d made, while looking into