of this case doesn’t change that. It takes forty-five minutes for me to be brought back to the room where I will see Kenny Schilling and then another twenty minutes waiting for him to arrive.
He’s brought in cuffed and dressed in prison drab. I had thought he looked bad huddled in the corner of his living room yesterday, but compared to this, he actually appeared triumphant. It looks as if fear and despair are waging a pitched battle to take over his face. The process of losing one’s freedom, even overnight, can be devastating and humiliating. For somebody like Kenny, it’s often much worse, because he’s fallen from such a high perch.
“How are you doing, Kenny?” is my clever opening. “Are they treating you okay?”
“They ain’t beating me, if that’s what you mean. They tried to talk to me, but I said no.”
“Good.”
“They took some blood out of my arm. They said they had the right. And I didn’t care, because all they’re gonna find is blood. I don’t take no drugs or anything.”
They actually don’t have that right, unless they had probable cause to believe that drug usage had something to do with the murder. I have heard nothing about any suspicions that drugs were involved in this case, but then again, I know almost nothing about this case. “You’re sure you’ve never taken any kind of drugs?” I ask.
He shakes his head firmly. “No way; I just told you that.” Then, “Man, you gotta get me out of here. I got money… whatever it takes. I just can’t stay in here.”
I explain that we won’t know the likelihood of bail until the district attorney files charges, but that those charges are likely to be severe, and bail will be very difficult. I’m not sure he really hears me or understands what I’m saying; he needs to cling to a hope that this is all going to blow over and he’ll be back signing autographs instead of giving fingerprints.
I ask him to tell me everything he knows about the night that Preston disappeared. “I didn’t kill him,” he says. “I swear to God.”
I nod. “Good. That covers what you didn’t do. Now let’s focus on what you did do. How well did you know him?”
He shrugs. “Pretty well. I mean, we weren’t best friends or anything—he played for the Jets. But in the off-season a lot of guys hung out…”
“So you hung out with him that night?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Not just him… a whole bunch of people. We went to the Crows Nest. No big deal. We probably did that three or four times a week.”
“How many people were there that night? With you and Troy.”
“Maybe fifteen.”
I take him through the events of the night, which mainly consisted of drinking beer, talking football, and occasionally leering at women. I never realized how much I had in common with star football players. “How long did you stay there?” I ask.
“I was real tired, so we left about twelve-thirty.”
“We?”
He nods. “I gave Troy a ride home.”
This is not good and confirms the media reports. The last time the victim was seen, it was by fifteen people, who watched him leave with my client. “Was that an unusual thing for you to do?”
He shakes his head. “No, he lived about two blocks from me. And I don’t drink that much, so he’d leave his car at the bar, and I guess he’d pick it up in the morning.”
“So he lived in Upper Saddle River?” I ask.
Kenny shakes his head and explains that Preston lived in an apartment in East Rutherford. Kenny did as well; he and his wife had only recently purchased the house in Upper Saddle River and hadn’t fully moved in yet. This explains the boxes spread around the house.
Kenny claims to have spent the fateful night in his East Rutherford apartment, alone. “I dropped Troy off and went home. That’s the last time I saw him.”
“Why did the police come to your house in Upper Saddle River?” I’ll learn all this in discovery, but it’s helpful to hear my client’s version first.
“The next morning my car was gone. I parked it on the street, and I figured it was stolen. Which it was. I reported it to the police. I hadn’t even heard about Troy being missing yet. Then yesterday I got a rental car and went up to the new house. I was unpacking boxes when I saw some blood on the floor. Then I found his