“Doesn’t sound like he’s on speaking terms with his father either,” Del agreed. So they had some leverage, at least for now. “Sounds as though we’ll get more bang for our buck if we question him before we book him. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about a charge of eluding a police officer or reckless endangerment. I want to find out what Welch knows.”
“If he asks for an attorney, all bets are off,” Celia said.
“So we take that chance,” Del said.
They thanked her and disconnected.
The windowless interrogation rooms on the seventh floor of Police Headquarters weren’t a lot of fun to sit in alone, and they got considerably smaller, and uncomfortable, when both Faz and Del squeezed their hulking frames inside. They took pride in making the room feel as small as possible, and they excelled at it.
They let Welch stew while continuing to debate their dilemma, observing him from behind the one-way mirror in the viewing room. Welch might have been eighteen years old, but he didn’t look it. “He looks sixteen, at best,” Del said.
Five feet seven inches, small boned, and rail thin, Welch couldn’t have weighed 120 pounds fully dressed. “I got coatracks weigh more than him,” Faz said.
Welch wore an unbuttoned, long-sleeve flannel shirt, likely to hide the track marks on his arms, and a black T-shirt with a picture of the Seattle grunge band Nirvana. His hair touched his shoulders and looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. He kept his head tilted, looking out from behind bangs. “He thinks he’s Kurt Cobain,” Faz said.
“Who?” Del said.
“His shirt. That’s the singer who had the drug problem. He shot himself two decades ago. Antonio listened to that crap.”
“I’ve got enough trouble keeping current,” Del said.
“You never had a teenage boy at home.”
“If this guy is the type of boy I’d have, I’ll take Sonny. At least his hair is short, he bathes, and he comes when I call him.”
It pained Del to think this was the guy Allie had been dating, that she thought so little of herself. But he again suspected, based on what the mother had told them about Jack’s need for money, that his relationship with Allie had not been based on mutual attraction but on mutual need—what Oprah, or Dr. Phil, would call “codependence”—a mutual need for heroin.
“You think he’s high?” Del asked.
“Hard to tell,” Faz said. “Left leg is doing a hell of a jig under the table, though. Based on what the mom said, he might be coming down after a binge.” Faz paused and turned from the window, facing Del. “Listen, why don’t you let me handle this one on my own, at least to start. Let’s see what he’s going to say.”
“I’m good.”
“Del—”
“I’m good.” He looked Faz in the eye. “Seriously, I’m all right. I understand what we’re trying to get out of this guy and I’m not going to screw that up.”
“You’ll let me take the lead, right?”
“I understand.”
“So how do you want to play it?” Faz asked.
“Same as always,” Del said. He pulled open the door to the room and stepped into the hallway. “I’ll be the hard-ass. Comes naturally.”
Faz followed Del around the corner. Del pulled open the door to the interrogation room and Welch glanced up at him through his long hair. Faz picked up a chair from the hall and made a production of fitting it into the room and setting it beside the other chair. He and Del sat shoulder to shoulder and leaned across the table, further closing the space with Welch. The young man pulled back as far as the chain, attached to handcuffs on one end and hooked to an eye bolt in the floor, would allow. If Welch hadn’t been claustrophobic before, he was one step closer now. The leg kept shaking.
“You’re sure you don’t need any medical care?” Faz asked.
Welch shook his head.
“Is that a no?” Faz asked.
“Sit up,” Del said, voice harsh. Welch turned his head and looked at him. “I said sit up or we’re finished here. We take you to jail and we book you on a whole host of charges—eluding arrest, driving under the influence, dangerous and reckless driving and, while we’re at it, how does controlled substance homicide sound to you?” Del waited a beat before adding, “We’re not talking about the penny-ante, bullshit charges that allow you to walk out of here and go home to Mommy. We’re way past that, Jack.”
Welch flipped his hair from his eyes and looked from Del to Faz. He sat up. “Homicide?” He sounded confused, voice hoarse. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“No? Does the name Allie Marcello ring any bells?” Del didn’t give Welch time to answer. “We have e-mails, text messages, and Snapchats that prove you pressured Allie Marcello to buy and use heroin the night of her death. She was clean, J-Man.” He emphasized the e-mail name, saying it with sarcasm. “She’d been clean for almost two months until she came home and you started in on her.”
“I didn’t sell her any heroin,” he said, stuttering. “I wasn’t even there.”
“You’re lying,” Faz said, voice calm. “And we know you’re lying.”
“I just told you, genius, we got her phone and her computer, and your name is all over both. What, do you think we’re stupid?” Del let that thought linger a few moments.
Faz reengaged. “So let me lay this out for you, Jack. Controlled substance homicide isn’t one of those arrests where you’re out tomorrow. The prosecutor charges you—that’s about two weeks from now, and if you can’t make bail, and I doubt you can, you’re going to be locked away until trial, which no one is going to rush. Probably take place a year from now. After you’re convicted, and you will be convicted, you’re going away for a long time.”
Jack Welch looked like he was about to say something, but Faz cut him off—and Del knew it was deliberate, in case Welch had been about to ask for a lawyer. Faz spoke patiently, like the times Del had been present when Faz spoke to his kids about some dumb thing they’d done. Vera made him soften his tone. “We want to find out what happened to Allie Marcello, Jack. We want to find out where she got the drugs. You were her friend.”
“I was her friend,” Welch quickly agreed.
“And you were with her when she overdosed,” Faz said.
“No. I wasn’t there. I left.”
“But you were with her when she shot up the heroin,” Faz said.
“I was there, but I didn’t take any.”
The lie was unraveling, one thread at a time. Del exercised discretion. “She’d been sober, hadn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
He leaned in closer. “Yes, you do. Her family sent her away. She’d been in Eastern Washington at a rehab facility. You e-mailed her because you couldn’t text her. She didn’t have her phone.”
Faz slid several of the e-mails Del had printed across the table. Welch flipped his hair out of his eyes and looked down at them, but did not pick them up. “When she got her phone back you continued pressuring her to see you.”
“No, that isn’t true.”
Faz slid more of Allie’s text messages across the table. “She finally gave in.”
“Her mother found her in her bedroom,” Del said. “Her last text indicates you were with her that night. So don’t tell us you weren’t there because we already know you were.”